COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose sent out a fundraising request disguised as an important letter, confusing and upsetting voters.

Normally, Bill Joiner just throws political mail aside, but this one looked official. Obtained by News 5, the letter's return address states "Secretary of State Frank LaRose." Beneath it, "DO NOT DISCARD OR DESTROY," also including "REGISTERED DOCUMENT ENCLOSED."

"I thought it might have to do with the legitimacy of my enrollment to vote," Joiner said.

Current Ohio law allows the Secretary of State to remove the registration from inactive voters. A way to find out if they are inactive is if they don’t respond to government mailings.

RELATED: How to find out if your voter registration was removed in Ohio’s mass purge

But much to Joiner’s surprise, it ended up just being a voter poll and request for money from LaRose. The options range from $50 to $5,000 and also leave room for the voter to choose any amount.

"I've been horrified by it and thinking that LaRose is using his office in this way, taking advantage of his position," he said. "It was an attempt to mislead me."

The Cincinnati registered Democratic voter isn't sure how he got the request, clearly meant for Republicans. News 5 spoke to six Republicans about it, all of whom felt the same way.

News 5 tried to speak with LaRose, but he was unavailable. The secretary addresses voters in the letter and signs it.

"My name is Frank LaRose, and I'm Ohio's hard-charging, conservative Secretary of State," LaRose wrote. "My most important job is raising three daughters with my beautiful wife Lauren, but serving as your Republican Secretary of State is a close second!"

The letter goes on to say, "Having run for statewide office twice, I know how challenging and expensive a winning political campaign is. Your gift of $50... will help meet expenses like running ads to expose the Biden Democrats' terrible record of woke socialism, identify swing voters who can be persuaded to vote for conservative Republican leaders up and down the ticket, and much more."

Atiba Ellis is a nonpartisan election law expert and he said LaRose technically didn't break any laws.

"This letter could be seen as, 'That sort of look sketchy,' and maybe it's an unfair advantage here, but isn't really illegal," Ellis said.

In the fine print, the letter shows it is a collaboration between LaRose and the Leadership for Ohio Fund, a 527 political group. Working with such a group would be illegal for candidates, which is the bigger issue Ellis sees with the letter.

What makes it legal is that the secretary hasn’t declared candidacy yet. He is expected to join the 2024 U.S. Senate race.

"This gets into the sort of slippery gray area of is it just really fundraising or is it trying to campaign without saying you're trying to campaign?" Ellis added.

LaRose would need to fundraise if he decides to announce he is running, which this money could help with.

As of right now, everything in this letter is legal.

Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

The Gavin Newsom recall election is happening in California.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber wrote in a letter to the Department of Finance that only 43 signatures in the petition to qualify the recall on the ballot were withdrawn statewide. The remaining 1,719,900 verified signatures more than meet the threshold for the recall to initiate.

The recall required 1,495,709 valid signatures or 12% of the 12,464,235 votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election to qualify, which was met after final verification was due April 29. However, voters were given a 30-day period to request county officials to remove their signatures from the recall petition.

The Department of Finance has until Aug. 5 to determine the cost of the recall election and submit it to the lieutenant governor and secretary of state's office, as well as the chair of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

That committee has 30 calendar days to review and comment on the estimates. Once the review period expires, the director of finance shall direct the state controller to transfer those funds.

According to state law, the estimates for the recall costs must be posted on the secretary of state's website and printed in the state voter information guide.

Now that the recall is happening, an election will decide on who would replace him. The secretary of state will certify the names of the candidates.

The recall ballot would then have two parts. Voters would be able to vote "yes" or "no" on whether to remove the governor from office. The second question would give voters the option to vote for a successor candidate. If a majority of voters said yes to the first question to recall, the votes on the second question would be counted. The candidate who received a plurality of that vote would be the successor.

The only California governor in state history to be recalled was Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, who was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Voters in that recall election faced a ballot of 135 candidates.

There appears to be progress between the U.S. and Iran to get both nations back in line with the 2015 nuclear deal. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with international leaders Tuesday for the G7 summit in London, but he's downplayed any reports of an imminent deal with Iran. 

Despite that, two of the nuclear deal's biggest supporters in Congress, Democratic Senators Chris Coons and Chris Murphy, are currently touring the Middle East. 

Secretary Blinken joined his counterpart for a news conference in London yesterday and he also addressed reports coming out of Iran in regards to American prisoners being held in the country.

Iran says a deal has been struck to get hostages back to the U.S. In exchange for billions of dollars, but Blinken says that's not true. 

"I have no higher priority than bringing arbitrarily detained Americans, American hostages home to the United States. And that's across the board," he said. "And as Dominic said, the reports coming out of Tehran are not accurate. We are very closely engaged, ourselves, on this issue and will remain so." 

While these types of prisoner swaps are common, they hold more weight between the two countries now as talks over the nuclear deal continue. 

This story originally reported by Eliana Moreno on Newsy.com.