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Ongoing Ohio audit finds 597 noncitizens who voted or registered to vote in recent elections, so far

August 23, 2024 | | Print Article

Nearly 600 noncitizens were referred for possible prosecution in the state of Ohio after they reportedly either registered to vote or cast a ballot to vote in an election.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced the move, noting that 138 people were found to have cast ballots and 459 others had registered but did not cast a vote, according to the Associated Press which downplayed the news by reporting that this was a “higher number than he normally finds but still a tiny fraction of the state’s electorate.”

“The total compares to 148 noncitizen cases referred in 2022, 117 in 2021, and 354 in 2019. More than 8 million people are registered to vote in Ohio,” the AP noted, adding that “Only a handful of noncitizen-related cases are ever prosecuted.”

The 597 apparent noncitizens were uncovered in what the AP further characterized as a “routine review” before they were referred to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

“I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country do not vote in our elections,” LaRose said in a statement. “We’ve so far identified 597 individuals who’ve registered to vote in Ohio despite not being citizens of the United States, as our state constitution requires. The evidence includes 138 individuals who appear to have cast a ballot in an Ohio election during the time state and federal records show they lacked citizenship status. The law requires me to refer these individuals to the attorney general, and that’s what we’re doing today.”

LaRose has touted the crackdown as “part of a multi-phase, comprehensive audit of the statewide voter registration database.” In a press release earlier this month, it was announced that election boards had completed “the removal of nearly 155,000 registrations confirmed to be abandoned and inactive for at least four consecutive years.”

Speaking with Benjamin Harnwell on War Room, LaRose explained that the “process is much harder than it needs to be because of a lack of cooperation from the federal government. “We’re using every resource we have, but it’s still not the full process that it could be.”

“But we’ve had an all-hands-on-deck approach where we’ve worked with our State Bureau of Motor Vehicles. That’s the first filter that we go through,” he continued.

“Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, when you get a state driver’s license or you get a state ID, we at that point establish your status. You’re either a citizen or a non-citizen. So we use that. With that, I was able to remove hundreds of non-citizens from the voter rolls. We then are left with some cases where we have a question. At one point, they were a non-citizen,” LaRose said.

LaRose created the first-ever Office of Data Analytics and Archives and a full-time Public Integrity Division. The Ohio General Assembly is currently considering legislation to make the division’s Election Integrity Unit a permanent function of the office.

Frieda Powers
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