Last week, voting rights activists said about 4,000 voters were wrongly placed on a list of 235,000 registrations provided by counties that were set to be removed or “purged” from the rolls next month. Ohio’s top election official says that’s not true, and in fact more people are now active voters.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose says the list of voters who could be removed from voter rolls now has nearly 10,000 active voters. He says that's a sign outreach efforts by nearly two dozen groups who are following up with those voters are working.
“That’s because they have responded to the mailing, that’s because they have gone on the website, that’s because they have taken the action to become an active voter again," LaRose says.
But the master list LaRose provided to groups to reach out to those voters hasn’t been updated. So, Mike Brickner, the Ohio State Director with All Voting is Local, says the eligible voters on that list could get called and might get confused.
“How many more are going to be impacted by that?” Brickner asks.
The list of 235,000 registrations includes people who have died or moved out of state. However LaRose says he’s following the voting rolls maintenance method upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
