By The New York Times (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-24 14:46:22 | Updated at 2024-09-30 07:20:15
5 days ago
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The Ohio sheriff who urged his followers to record the addresses of people with yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris will no longer head security at the county’s early voting location.
By Tim Balk
- Sept. 24, 2024, 10:35 a.m. ET
An Ohio sheriff has been stripped of his role providing security at his county’s early voting location, members of a local elections board said, after he compared immigrants to insects and urged residents to record the addresses of people who have yard signs supporting Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a Facebook post earlier this month, the sheriff, Bruce D. Zuchowski of Portage County, called Ms. Harris a “Laughing Hyena,” and described immigrants as locusts, the crop-destroying pests that were said in the Bible to have caused a plague in Egypt.
“Write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards!” Mr. Zuchowski, a Republican who is running for re-election, said of Ms. Harris’s supporters, according to a screenshot of the since-deleted post. Then when immigrants “need places to live,” he wrote, “we’ll already have the addresses of their New families.”
His comments were met with swift condemnation. And on Friday, the bipartisan Portage County Board of Elections voted 3 to 1 to remove the sheriff’s office from its role providing security at the board’s office during the early voting period, which lasts from Oct. 8 to Nov. 3. (One Republican board member voted for the motion; the other Republican member voted against it.)
During early voting in Portage County, which is southeast of Cleveland, residents can vote only at the Board of Elections office.
The board’s vote came in response to residents’ fears stemming from Mr. Zuchowski’s post, and concerns that the presence of the sheriff’s department on site could create an “appearance of impropriety,” said Terrie Nielsen, the deputy director of the Elections Board, who is a Democrat.
