Ohio’s Secretary of State says he will release the list of registrations removed from voting rolls this month to various voter groups so they can re-register people by the October 7 deadline. After that, Frank LaRose says he might check past voter removal lists for errors.
Voting rights groups have been asking LaRose to review past lists of removed voters to see if some were taken off the rolls by mistake. He says he’s focused on the list of voters removed during the recent “purge” on September 6.
But he’s not ruling out looking back at lists of voters removed before he took office in January.
“It’s entirely possible that the same problems that we found have occurred in the past and have gone unnoticed,” LaRose says. “It’s entirely possible. The law of averages tells you that.”
Voter rights groups have raised questions about the accuracy of these lists. Some mistakes were discovered after LaRose gave the lists to about two dozen community groups this summer.
The groups tried to locate some of the voters on the lists to get them to make their registrations current, succeeding with about 12,000. LaRose says his office has been working with counties to make sure those problems are corrected.
LaRose is pushing for a bill that will allow a non-partisan board to certify the voter registration process. He's also advocating for automatic updates to voter registrations when Ohioans renew their drivers' licenses.
Larose says the current system that involves four vendors in 88 counties lacks uniformity.
