Ohio Sec. of State Frank LaRose thinks he’s found noncitizens on the voter rolls

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks to reporters. (Photo by Susan Tebben, OCJ.)

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is again raising the alarm about noncitizens on the state voter rolls. An Ohio Capital Journal investigation last year found a single legitimate case of noncitizen voter fraud among the 521 cases of alleged fraud LaRose’s office had identified up to that point.

The latest batch includes 137 individuals flagged by LaRose’s office because their voter registration matches a Bureau of Motor Vehicles registration in which the resident identified as a noncitizen. Ohio Capital Journal reached out to LaRose’s office for an interview. They did not respond to that request.

Importantly, what exactly LaRose has uncovered remains unclear.

He makes no claim of identifying illegally cast ballots. Between the voters’ names and the election history maintained in the Secretary’s statewide voter registration database, it would presumably be easy to find illegal votes if they exist.

And LaRose himself acknowledges what he found “may be the result of an honest mistake.”

“These may be well-meaning people trying to pursue the American dream,” LaRose said in a press release, “and communication barriers sometimes result in a registration form being submitted in error. We need to help them get that cleared up before an accidental registration becomes an illegal vote that could result in a felony conviction or even deportation.”

However, that hasn’t stopped him from flogging the story on conservative media — taking credit for ensuring only U.S. citizens can vote and deriding federal agencies for a perceived lack of cooperation.

“And this is the difference,” he told radio host Bob Frantz earlier this week, “between an aggressive, conservative Secretary of State, and oh, I don’t know, say some activist liberal in this position, as well, that wouldn’t bother to do all of the things that I’m doing to safeguard our rolls.”

The context

LaRose has identified 137 registration discrepancies among the state’s roughly 8 million registered voters. “A good number,” LaRose admitted to Frantz, “It’s only 137 out of 8 million, but it’s not acceptable.” Even if granting every single discrepancy represents a noncitizen knowingly, and thus illegally, registered to vote, 137 individuals amount to .000017 of the total electorate.

That’s less than 1% of 1%.

And there are at least two reasonable explanations for the discrepancies LaRose found.

First, as LaRose himself alluded to, many people fill out the voter registration form in error. Because of the so-called Motor Voter law, you get the opportunity to register whenever you visit the BMV.

“Imagine you’re here completely legally,” LaRose described on air, “You’re on legal status, maybe a student visa or a work visa, and you have limited English proficiency to begin with. You’re handed a voter registration form, you probably just fill it out and don’t ask any questions.”

Several cases identified in the Capital Journal’s voter fraud investigation amounted to noncitizens self-identifying as such only for county boards of elections to process their registration anyway. Presented with those cases, prosecutors declined to move forward. That’s evidence of confusion, they argued, not fraud.

The second reason discrepancies might occur is the lag time between an individual becoming a U.S. citizen and state agencies hearing about it.

“Most likely these are individuals who have become citizens very recently, and his records are not up to date,” League of Women Voters of Ohio executive director Jen Miller explained.

New citizens are often encouraged to register to vote as soon as they finish taking the citizenship oath. But their change in citizenship status only shows up in state records when they take the time to visit everyone favorite place — the BMV.

The Capital Journal’s investigation highlighted a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services program known as SAVE as a potential tool the Secretary could use to doublecheck flagged registrations against a list of naturalized citizens. A handful of other states already use it to check their voter rolls, and as part of his announcement LaRose said Ohio would soon join them.

Still, even that program isn’t a silver bullet. In 2013, for instance, Florida’s reliance on SAVE resulted in several citizens being improperly removed. Part of the problem is SAVE doesn’t include information about citizens born in the United States.

Miller argued SAVE just isn’t really built for the task.

“It just was not designed for voter registration verification and it’s going to leave a lot to be desired,” Miller said. “It would be far better for the secretary of state to use ERIC which was designed specifically to help improve the accuracy of voter rolls.”

LaRose pulled Ohio out of the Electronic Registration Information Center last year in a wave of Republican-led states that exited the program in response to a series of articles published on The Gateway Pundit. The publication filed for bankruptcy last month in the face of a defamation suit filed by two Georgia elections workers.

Miller is also frustrated with the Secretary touting suspicions of fraud without later describing what became of those cases.

“It would also be really good for the secretary to circle back and let us know how often those investigations turn into actual examples of attempted voter fraud,” she said. “You know my experience is that the anomalies found are usually not.”

Answering that question was at the heart of the Capital Journal’s investigation. Of the 641 incidents the Secretary flagged, less than 3% resulted in a conviction. Those 13 cases compared to the votes cast since LaRose took office offer a voter fraud rate of .0001%.

What else LaRose wants

Although LaRose is joining SAVE, he’s apparently not too happy about it.

“There’s a big bureaucratic process they make us go through periodically, every time we use it,” he told Frantz. “It also is something we have to pay for each time we do a query and it’s a very manual process.”

He added that his office wants access to even more federal data — including from the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration. He even wants to know which jurors federal courts reject, contending that could be a proxy for determining citizenship.

To that end, LaRose argued Congress should pass legislation sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-TX, in the House “requiring the federal government to make these databases available.”

Roy’s legislation goes a bit further than that, though. It also requires voters show documentary proof of citizenship — in person — to register.  In a press release, Roy insists “we must end the practice of non-citizens voting in our elections.”

The thing is a handful of states already tried requiring proof of citizenship to register, and the result was tens of thousands of eligible citizens denied the right to vote. In 2021, the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals determined those requirements violated federal law.

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.

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