Cincinnati area chemist takes stage at Trump rally to tout false claims about 2020 election

Editor's note: This story has been updated with information from the Schilling School for Gifted Children.

A Cincinnati-area teacher, chemist and mathematician who has attracted national notoriety for his ideas about COVID-19 and alleged voter fraud took the stage at Donald Trump's Ohio rally Saturday.

"So do you think in Ohio we had a clean election?" Douglas Frank asked the crowd.

"No!" they roared, despite the fact that Trump won the Buckeye State by 8 percentage points in November.

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Frank, of Morrow, is the former math and science department chair at the Schilling School for Gifted Children in Cincinnati, but has become better known for his place on the political stage. He said Trump invited him to speak at the Lorain County Fairgrounds Saturday to share data that he claims prove widespread voter fraud in Ohio and across the country.

Frank's presentation felt like a math lesson, complete with charts and graphs that the crowd seemed less than eager to absorb on a hot afternoon. He claimed election officials followed the same formula to rig the process: inflating the voter registration database, inputting false ballots and cleaning up the rolls afterward.

In an interview Wednesday, Frank promised that he and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — a Trump supporter who also attended Saturday's rally — will release information in July that shows voting machines were hooked up to the internet. Ohio law prohibits that.

"We need to undo the last election and have a real election," he said.

Frank's theories have been debunked more than once. The Washington Post broke down his math and determined it merely shows that turnout is consistent by age group. A report from the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, led by two Republicans, argued Frank's claims weren't "sound," saying they didn't account for moving patterns or same-day registration that would create natural disparities between Census data and voter registrations.

"The patterns he sees are not unexpected or unusual to elections or human behavior in general," the report stated.

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Frank said he's taking a sabbatical from Schilling this year because he doesn't have enough time to teach while spreading his gospel. The head of the school, Sandra Kelly-Schilling, said Thursday that he's no longer the department chair after she asked him to go on sabbatical for an undetermined amount of time. He's also been taken off the school website's faculty page.

"He doesn't really have the focus that we need for a teacher," Kelly-Schilling said.

Frank has been removed from YouTube, which tends to happen if regulators find the content is false or misleading. He also recently joined Joe Blystone, a fringe Republican candidate for governor, in meeting with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose's office to discuss their concerns.

Spokesman Rob Nichols said the meeting lasted nearly two and a half hours.

"Dr. Frank acknowledged that he does not currently possess any evidence to prove his theories about irregularities in the 2020 election, or any previous elections which he also claims were tainted," Nichols said.

Still, Frank stands by his work: "You can’t argue with the math."

Haley BeMiller is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Trump rally featured Cincinnati chemist, false election claims