Vivek Ramaswamy is campaigning to put election-integrity requirements into Ohio’s Constitution. But during his 2024 presidential campaign, his operation submitted forged nominating signatures bearing the names of dead voters, collected through a contractor that employed an Ohio woman with 17 prior forgery convictions.
The fraud was documented by Rhode Island election officials and acknowledged by Ramaswamy’s own campaign. After officials discovered the names of deceased voters on his presidential petitions, the campaign said an investigation by its signature-gathering contractor found that an employee had intentionally written those names on the forms. The worker was fired.
Now, as the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, Ramaswamy is urging voters to approve State Issue 3, a constitutional amendment he championed as a safeguard against election fraud. The amendment would not have prevented the kind of petition forgery found in his presidential campaign.
Dead voters on presidential petitions
On Jan. 10, 2024, Rhode Island Deputy Elections Director Miguel Nunez warned election officials across the state that Coventry canvassers had rejected an unusually high number of signatures on Ramaswamy’s presidential petitions. His alert identified two collectors, Heidy Moore and Michael Michols, and instructed election boards to watch for possible patterns of forgery.
In the same warning, Nunez reported that Warwick officials had found deceased voters’ names on Ramaswamy’s petitions. Election officials subsequently identified five dead Warwick residents on forms collected by Moore. The residents had died between 2017 and 2023. Providence officials separately reported at least six deceased people’s names on petitions submitted for Ramaswamy, according to Rhode Island Current.
Warwick canvassers certified only 144 of the 334 signatures submitted for Ramaswamy, rejecting 190 — nearly 57% of the total. The petitions were part of Ramaswamy’s effort to qualify for the state’s Republican presidential primary.
An Ohio signature collector convicted on 17 forgery counts
The collector named in the state’s warning was Heidi D. Moore of Orrville, Ohio. A Boston Globe examination of Ohio court records found that Moore had been convicted of 17 forgery counts in Medina and Wayne counties in 2007 and served prison time. The cases involved forged checks.
On the Rhode Island petitions, Moore signed an affidavit under oath declaring that the people listed had signed in her presence. Five of the purported signers identified on her Warwick forms were already dead. Moore told the Globe she had gathered signatures outside a Walmart in Warwick and denied knowing how the deceased voters’ names appeared on the petitions. She confirmed she had been fired by the signature-gathering firm.
Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign hired Missouri-based GroundGame Political Solutions to collect signatures. Then-campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed to Rhode Island Current that the contractor’s inquiry uncovered intentional forgery by a worker and said the firm had notified Warwick police. The campaign denied participating in or knowing about the falsification.
Rhode Island law makes knowingly falsifying or filing false nomination papers a felony. These were signatures on ballot-access petitions, not ballots cast in an election — a distinction central to the election-integrity plan Ramaswamy is now promoting in Ohio.
The election fraud his Ohio amendment would not stop
In a May 18, 2026, opinion column, Ramaswamy called on Ohio lawmakers to place the state’s photo-ID requirement in the Constitution, arguing that the existing law could otherwise be changed or overturned. He also promoted federal voter-identification legislation as a way to prevent fraud and strengthen public confidence in elections.
“Voter ID laws can restore this trust,” Ramaswamy wrote.
Ohio already requires approved, unexpired photo identification for in-person voting. The amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot would make that requirement constitutional and establish identity-verification rules for other voting methods. It would impose no new requirement that political campaigns vet paid petition circulators or authenticate the signatures they collect to qualify candidates for the ballot.
Rhode Island officials exposed the forgery on Ramaswamy’s presidential petitions by reviewing signatures submitted for ballot access. Ohio’s proposed constitutional amendment addresses the identification of people casting votes. It does nothing to stop campaign contractors from submitting forged nominating signatures under the names of dead voters — the very fraud acknowledged by Ramaswamy’s own presidential campaign.
