Ohio Takes Action to Purge Voter Rolls: 137 Foreign Registrations Detected

Ohio is launching additional measures to ensure foreign nationals aren’t voting in elections, the state’s leading election official announced Tuesday.

According to an office press release, LaRose, a Republican, issued a directive to the state’s 88 county boards of elections “initiating a confirmation and removal process of non-citizens from the state’s voter registration rolls.” LaRose’s office will also be taking further steps to “conduct an annual review of the statewide voter registration database to identify persons who appear not to be United States citizens,” as required by state law.

“It is my duty under the law to uphold the constitution, and the legislature has explicitly tasked me with ensuring that only eligible citizens can register and vote,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in a statement.

More than three-quarters (76.9 percent) of Ohio voters passed a constitutional amendment proposal during the 2022 midterms stipulating “only” U.S. citizens can vote in state and local elections.

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A recent review of Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) identification records conducted by the Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division and Office of Data Analytics and Archives discovered 137 voter registrations “assigned to Ohio residents who have twice confirmed their non-citizenship status to the BMV,” according to LaRose’s office. Ohio law mandates there be two instances of an individual submitting records to the BMV indicating he is not a U.S. citizen — once before and once after he votes or registers to vote — before the secretary of state can begin the process of removing him from voter rolls.

Individuals identified under this statute as potential noncitizens will receive up to two notices from the secretary of state’s office, “instructing the person either to confirm that the person is a United States citizen or to submit a completed voter registration cancellation form to the secretary of state.” Failure to respond “not later than thirty days after the second notice is sent” will prompt the secretary of state to “refer the matter to the attorney general for further investigation and possible prosecution.”

Other steps announced Tuesday include requests to the Biden administration for access to citizenship data from a series of federal agencies, which LaRose’s office says will help it identify potential noncitizens on Ohio’s voter rolls. LaRose requested access to “a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services resource used to verify citizenship status” known as the SAVE database, and “citizenship-identifying records” from the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security databases.

LaRose’s office also seeks access to federal district court records “disclosing individuals disqualified from jury service due to a lack of United States citizenship.”

The move to ensure only U.S. citizens are voting in Ohio elections comes amidst President Biden’s manufactured invasion at the U.S. southern border and growing concerns that foreign nationals could exploit existing election loopholes to influence America’s electoral system. While largely dismissed as a non-issue by legacy media, the problem of noncitizens frequenting state voter rolls and casting ballots in U.S. elections is anything but.

A new report by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), for example, disclosed data from Boston, Massachusetts, showing 70 voter registrations were recently canceled due to a lack of U.S. citizenship. Of those 70 canceled records, 22 had “known histories of voting.” One of the files listed in the report involves an individual named “Fred,” who disclosed that the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles registered him to vote — despite the fact he’s a “green card holder and not a citizen.”

Massachusetts is one of several states that employ automatic voter registration, in which individuals are registered at state agencies such as the Department of Motor Vehicles. AVR has produced bloated (and inaccurate) voter rolls in states where it’s been implemented and is often exploited by left-wing groups to boost Democrats’ electoral prospects.

Prior PILF reports have also unearthed the pervasive number of noncitizens on Arizona voter rolls. In February, the group revealed that 186 foreign nationals residing in Pima County had been “involuntarily purged” from the Grand Canyon State’s voter registration lists since 2021. A separate PILF report released last year found that 222 residents of Maricopa County, Arizona had been removed from voter rolls since 2015 for being foreign nationals.

Democrat-led cities in states such as Maryland and California have adopted measures in recent years permitting noncitizen voting in their municipal elections. Moreover, Washington, D.C. passed legislation in recent years granting foreign nationals the ability to vote in the district’s local elections.

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Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood