COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Voter advocacy groups have alerted Ohio’s Republican elections chief to the systematic delisting of voters in several counties in an apparent violation of federal law.
A letter sent to Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Thursday, just days before Ohio’s registration deadline on Monday, said the way groups of voters suspected of leaving the state are being systematically removed – based on challenges by outside groups without direct knowledge of a voter’s situation – is illegal.
The Ohio chapters of Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, represented by the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice in Washington, D.C., urged LaRose to correct the violations within 20 days or face a lawsuit. LaRose’s office is reviewing the request.
The voter advocates cite public documents, including minutes of county election board meetings, voter challenge materials and other communications, showing mass removals in Delaware, Muskingum, likely Logan and possibly Cuyahoga counties. The latter is home to Cleveland, a Democratic stronghold.
The National Voter Registration Act prohibits the systematic removal of names from voter rolls 90 days before federal elections. It also requires election officials to notify voters when their registration is in danger of expiring, and provides a four-year period to remedy the situation.
In their letter, the cited advocates recently issued guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice clarifying that an individual can be removed from the rolls for a change of residency only under two circumstances: if the voter submits a written change of address, or if a marked registration meets the requirements. all federal notice and waiting period requirements.
Dan Lusheck, a spokesman for LaRose’s office, said an Ohio law that has been in place for nearly two decades expressly allows voters to be challenged up to 30 days before the election. However, that law only applies to issues involving individual voters, not systematic removals.
LaRose’s office said the secretary voted unanimously Wednesday against continuing most of the registration issues in Delaware County. Lusheck said the agency would review the groups’ claims regarding the other three provinces.
Conservative groups across the country have systematically questioned the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registration drives this year. Democrats have alleged in lawsuits that it is a coordinated effort to get the American electorate to doubt the results of the 2024 presidential election, as former President Donald Trump repeatedly claims, without evidence that his opponents are trying to cheat.
In Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, ordered an elections clerk in a Detroit suburb to restore the registrations of about 1,000 people that were deleted after third-party efforts. And last week, the Alabama Department of Justice sued the state and its top elections official, arguing that Alabama illegally purged voters too close to the November election.
The voter advocates gave several examples of what is happening around Ohio.
In the fast-growing suburbs of Delaware County north of Columbus, the Board of Elections in August granted at least 84 third-party challenges — and possibly hundreds more — based on the alleged voter relocation. The proponents said there was no evidence that affected voters had been communicated directly as required.
About a dozen similar removals were carried out in Muskingum County, in eastern Ohio, during two hearings in July, the lawyers wrote, where challenges were brought by outside groups such as Check My Vote and The People’s Audit. The attorneys told LaRose there is no evidence the county first complied with federally required notice and waiting period procedures. Similar moves appear to have taken place in Logan County, southern Ohio, in June, they found.
In the letter announcing his groundbreaking vote in Delaware County, LaRose said a total of about 300 registrations were challenged because voters had left the state. He noted that those shown to have registered or voted in North Carolina — about 60 people — were removed in a bipartisan vote. But LaRose said he “regrettably” had to resist continuing challenges to the remaining 240 due to a lack of “clear and convincing” evidence that they had subsequently registered and/or voted in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Tennessee or Texas .
“Let me make it clear that I commend the citizens who are so passionate about the integrity of our elections that they can crowdsource the veracity of our voter rolls,” LaRose wrote. “Their community involvement is to be applauded, and I share their commitment to fair and accurate elections.”
