Ohio voters were not the only ones to raise an eyebrow at an announcement by state Attorney General Dave Yost earlier this week. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley had a thing or two to say about it as well.

It turns out, one of the six green card holders indicted for allegedly voting illegally — Ramesh Patel, 68, previously of North Royalton, Ohio — has been dead for two years. The last time Yost’s office was accusing Patel of having voted illegally was in 2018.

Despite Yost’s attention-getting effort, according to WOIO the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office said it has a policy of only indicting living people. It added that, in fact, in the last year and a half it has prosecuted and convicted James Saunders and Ron Berkowitz for voter fraud.

“This is one of the greatest examples of prosecutorial overreach I have ever witnessed,” O’Malley said, according to WOIO. “The practice of indicting the deceased is draconian. This is not how we would have handled this case in my office. I am calling on Ohio Attorney General David Yost to immediately dismiss this indictment.”

Revelation of the mistake made suggests at best Yost’s office was careless in not researching the cases it planned to include in its two-weeks-until-Election-Day announcement.

Why the rush?

Surely the state Attorney General’s office will indeed dismiss the case against Patel.

In the meantime, voters have been given a glimpse at how flawed the process can be when political figures cobble together last-minute headline-grabbing efforts. Good for O’Malley for speaking up.