Homeless advocates are urging Ohio officials not to carry out a planned voter purge before the November election.
About 160,000 Ohioans will lose their ability to vote on July 22, 2024. This elimination should only affect inactive and scarce voters, but voting rights advocates say they have just two weeks to resolve the civil rights issue.
“Ohio’s current voting system systematically disenfranchises our most vulnerable citizens,” said Cid Standifer of Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates (NOVA).
NOVA has identified 500 registered voters for removal. What they all have in common is that all of the voters are homeless and registered to vote in Cleveland shelters.
Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries operates one of the, if not the, largest men’s shelters at 2100 Lakeside Ave. Nearly 400 people registered at that address will be removed.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (CCBOE) said it placed more than 130 people on the purge list because mail that was sent to shelters to verify that a voter lived there was returned as “undeliverable” or the board did not receive a response. More than 250 others had voter information that “did not match BMV records.”
It’s unclear what information doesn’t match the state’s data, since boards don’t have to report it. BOE Director Tony Perlatti said he would provide that information.
“The state of Ohio says this is a way for homeless people to vote,” Standifer said. “They can use the address of a homeless shelter or a service center where they can accept mail.”
The purge applies to Ohioans of all income levels. If you change your mailing address, don’t vote for four years and don’t respond to mail from the BOE, your voter status can be revoked. Even if you don’t move but don’t vote for six years, you can also be eliminated.
While the purges are controversialCase Western Reserve University election law professor Atiba Ellis says they have a purpose.
“States have a lot of discretion in how they conduct elections and, in particular, how they register voters and maintain voter rolls,” Ellis said.
The practice has been challenged in court, with the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Ohio and other organizations filing suit, alleging that the voter registration process violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. The NVRA prohibits the removal of voters for no other reason than failure to vote.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 ruled 5-4 that while Ohio purges infrequent voters, the mail-in process is sufficient grounds to remove an individual.
“Federal law requires states to make what is essentially a good faith effort to maintain accurate lists,” the professor added. “If the database gets too large, it becomes difficult to manage.”
Perlatti said they have no intention of disenfranchising any legitimate voters or disenfranchising homeless people, but emphasized they are required by law to follow the procedure.
“We definitely don’t want to promote this [disenfranchisement]but at the same time, everyone needs to have a registration address so we can assign them to a precinct and know which ballot to give them,” the director said. “If they move to another shelter or something, we want to make sure they’re registered there.”
There is at least one person living in the shelter who registered to vote in 2024 and is still on the removal list. Perlatti said he will look into the reasoning behind it.
But Standifer wants to know how to solve this problem since voting is a civil right.
“Where do we find these people and let them know they’re on the clearing list?” Standifer asked in disbelief.
Perlatti said the message will hopefully assist spread the word so people know they are on the cleanup list. And so shelter officials can notify their clients.
“We should eliminate voter purging,” Standifer said. “It takes people with messy lives — with difficult situations — and takes them off the ballot.”
We reached out to Secretary of State Frank LaRose about this dilemma and asked if there were ways to assist homeless people, but did not receive a response.
How to Know If You’re Getting Cleansed
The full list of registrations to be cancelled can be viewed on the SOS website Registration readiness webpage available here.
If you find out you are on the list, you must update your voter registration, what can you do hereYou can also go to local BOE or call and ask about your status.
If you are not on the removal list but haven’t voted in a while, check this out SOS Page to check if you are still registered.
Fortunately, you can re-register to vote even after being purged and still vote in the presidential race. The purge will take place on July 22, and the deadline to register to vote is October 7.
Fighting the Purges
LaRose is supposed to release a list of everyone he removes from the rolls before the voter registration deadline, which he did this year. But he didn’t do that last year.
LaRose originally planned to remove about 140,000 names, but Democrats say about 16,000 voters were incorrectly marked. And that it’s not the first time.
In 2019, the Secretary spoke to WEWS about the challenges that emerged during the last election.
“Over 10,000 voters said, ‘No, I still want to be registered to vote in Ohio,’ so they took action, went to our website or filled out a form and sent it in,” LaRose said at the time.
According to estimates, this list ultimately attracted 30,000 additional voters. New York Times report.
A review of one vendor’s work found that more than 1,400 names were incorrectly added to the list, prompting calls from the League of Women Voters and other groups to delay the 2019 removals. Multiple activist groups reached out to WEWS to express initial concerns about the list, arguing that the names were inexact.
“It should not be [voters’] “The work that can’t be removed,” state Rep. Bride Sweeney (D-Cleveland) said last year. “Our job is not to arbitrarily remove people who have done the work to register with the state.”
LaRose said the state is not trying to disenfranchise any legitimate voter, but having this process in place will ensure the security of Ohio’s elections.
To be clear, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Ohio. One of the few cases in which a conviction was ever brought was that of a Republican lawyer from Cleveland who voted twice in the 2020 and 2022 elections.
If you believe you or someone you care about has been wrongly added to a voter purging list, email Statehouse reporter Morgan Trau at [email protected] with the theme “VOTER CLEANSING”.
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