CLEANING HOUSE: Ohio removes nearly 155,000 names from voter rolls due to inactive or expired registrations

By avagrace // 2024-08-14

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Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently announced that the state's county boards of elections have purged nearly 155,000 names from the state's voter rolls. The removals were the next phase of the statewide voter registration database audit, which ended with 154,995 voters being taken out of the voter rolls for inactivity or having expired registrations. The deadline for registration to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7. (Related: Federal judge upholds Ohio law requiring photo ID at polling booths.) "The law requires us to identify inactive voters, those that have moved out of state for example, and remove them from the voter rolls," LaRose said in an interview. He had directed county election directors in May to hunt through the voter rolls in an effort to remove inactive or expired registrations. "These registrations are eligible for removal under the law because records show they're no longer residing or active at the registered address for at least the last four consecutive years." All 88 county boards of elections were required to collect and submit this data to LaRose's office. "There's room for human error to occur," LaRose said. "So let's publish the list, leave it out there for a while for people to scrutinize, and when we find errors we can fix those. But what we don't want to do is remove anyone from the voter rolls unnecessarily.” "Every Ohioan, regardless of their political views, should care about accurate voter rolls," LaRose continued. "Diligent list maintenance helps prevent voter fraud and ensures the voice of the voters is heard on Election Day. Ohio’s process has been carried out by Republican and Democratic secretaries of state for decades, and I’m proud of the work our bipartisan elections officials do to ensure it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat in the Buckeye State."

499 Noncitizens also purged from Ohio voter rolls

LaRose earlier announced that 499 noncitizens who were registered to vote were also taken out of the voter rolls. The removal came after these individuals confirmed their status as noncitizens with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. State officials then followed up and confirmed their status with the federal government. LaRose has been diligent in reporting suspected cases of voter fraud. Since taking office in January 2019, he has referred more than 600 of these cases, but only one of them involved a suspected noncitizen who was able to cast a vote. The suspect was charged with voter fraud. While investigations into the citizenship status of voters remains ongoing, it is unclear if LaRose will be pressing charges against the 499 noncitizens who were registered voters. "I want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and say that most of them didn't intend to break the law," said LaRose. "We want to make sure a mistaken registration doesn't become an illegal vote. We also want to make sure that lawfully registered citizens can participate seamlessly in the process, especially if their citizenship status changed recently." Watch this video from "Flyover Conservatives" providing a very detailed, state-by-state breakdown of what may happen in the election. This video is from the Flyover Conservatives channel on Brighteon.com.

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499 Noncitizens also purged from Ohio voter rolls

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