After a review found more than 100 Ohio residents were registered to vote, despite their lack of U.S. citizenship, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) recently ordered that non-citizens be purged from the state's voter rolls.
The Ohio Public Integrity Division's subsequent investigation and analysis of data from the state's Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) found 137 people appeared on voter rolls, despite twice confirming they were not U.S. citizens.
"I thought when I first looked at the headlines that Oh, this is great. They're cleaning up the voter rolls. They're getting rid of the non-citizens who have been registered to vote illegally," comments Janet Porter, founder and president of Faith2Action. "But then I read the article, and it is only 137 people they cleared off the voting rolls. That is, and I believe very strongly, the tip of the iceberg."
She thinks the state needs to look deeper, because she guarantees there are more than 137 people who are registered that should not be. Much of the problem, she adds, is at the BMV.
"They have motor voting; as soon as you get a license, all of a sudden, you're registered to vote," Porter explains. "That's where I really think we need to look and see who is it that's being registered illegally, because I think that's one of the entrance ways into the voting rolls. It needs to be stopped, and it needs to be stopped now, while there's still time to save America and our elections."
Much of the data provided by the BMV requires cross-referencing with other databases, some of them federal.
LaRose's office acknowledges there may be more non-citizens registered to vote than the initial investigation uncovered. So, Ohio is calling on President Biden's administration to provide access to several sources of citizenship data.
