In a victory for election integrity, the state of Ohio Secretary of State, Frank LaRose is ordering the purging of Buckeye state voter rolls. A recent audit uncovered hundreds of non-citizens who were illegally registered to vote, presumably prompting the purge.
The audit uncovered 499 individuals who were registered to vote but were not U.S. citizens. The removals announced Thursday include individuals who confirmed their noncitizen status to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. That data was then paired with the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, which also confirmed them to be noncitizens.
“These individuals failed to respond to notices from the Secretary of State’s office asking that they either confirm their citizenship status or cancel their registration,” LaRose’s office said in a statement.
Officials clarified that any individual losing their registration as a result of Thursday’s action may submit a provisional ballot, which “will be counted upon proof of citizenship.”
This action brings up two questions:
1) Why wasn’t this done sooner? This kind of purging or, at least, the verification of voter rolls, seems like something that should be done at regular intervals.
2) Why aren’t more states doing this? There are plenty of people who are losing (or who have lost) faith in our elections, and making a point of cleaning up the voter rolls would go a long way toward restoring that faith.
Frank LaRose, at least, has the correct attitude towards the problem, telling Fox News Digital in a statement.
“I swore an oath to uphold the constitution of our state, and that document clearly states that only United States citizens can participate in Ohio elections. That means I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country aren’t voting. If or when they do become citizens, I’ll be the first one to congratulate them and welcome them to the franchise, but until then the law requires us to remove ineligible registrations to prevent illegal voting.”
A government official who cites the law as his reason for action – imagine that.
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Ohio does require the presentation of a government-issued ID to vote; if someone shows up at the polls without said ID, they are allowed to cast a provisional ballot and must present a valid ID within four days for their vote to be counted. That’s a good policy, and seems like it would be a minimal requirement in all 50 states, were there any sense involved in these matters; however, in some jurisdictions, common sense isn’t.
Another question, of course, is this: Given the waves of illegal immigration into the United States, and given the number of states that give illegal aliens government-issued IDs and even driver’s licenses, why are not similar audits being done in the remaining 49 states? Where are these states in cleaning up their own voter rolls? There are legal actions to push this practice, including in some states that are resistant to such cleanups; that, at least, is encouraging.
Meanwhile, Ohio’s voter roll audit and the removal of ineligible registrations continue apace.
Ohio’s audit remains an ongoing process, and LaRose’s office says it may announce more voter roll purges as Election Day nears. The state has also removed nearly 155,000 registrations confirmed to be abandoned and inactive for at least four consecutive years.
This is what we call a “good start.”
This seems appropriate.
