Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is once again raising the alarm about foreigners appearing on the state’s voter rolls. Last year, an investigation by the Ohio Capital Journal found one substantiated case of voter fraud by a foreigner out of 521 cases of alleged fraud identified by LaRose’s office to that point.
The latest group includes 137 people flagged by LaRose’s office because their voter registration matches a Bureau of Motor Vehicles registration that identified the resident as a noncitizen. The Ohio Capital Journal reached out to LaRose’s office for an interview. They did not respond to this request.
LaRose State’s Ohio Section reported more than 520 cases of non-citizen voter fraud. Only one was legal.
Importantly, what exactly LaRose discovered remains unclear.
It does not claim to identify illegally cast ballots. By comparing voter names and election history maintained in the Secretary’s statewide voter registration database, it would likely be straightforward to find illegal votes, if any.
LaRose himself admits that what he discovered “may have been the result of an honest mistake.”
“These may be well-intentioned people trying to achieve the American Dream,” LaRose said in a news release, “and communication barriers sometimes result in incorrectly submitted registration forms. We must help them clear this up before accidental registration becomes an illegal vote that could result in a criminal conviction or even deportation.”
But that doesn’t stop him from lashing out at the story in conservative media – taking credit for ensuring that only U.S. citizens can vote and ridiculing federal agencies for their alleged lack of cooperation.
“And that’s the difference,” he told radio host Bob Frantz earlier this week, “between an aggressive, conservative Secretary of State and, oh, I don’t know, let’s say some activist liberal in that position would not bother doing all this , what I do, to protect our buns.
Context
LaRose identified 137 registration discrepancies among the state’s roughly 8 million registered voters. “Good number,” LaRose admitted to Frantz. “It’s only 137 million out of 8 million, but it’s unacceptable.” Even if the granting of every single variance means a non-citizen knowingly, and therefore illegally, registered to vote, 137 people constitute 0.000017 of the total electorate.
That’s less than 1% of 1%.
There are at least two reasonable explanations for the discrepancy that LaRose discovered.
First, as LaRose himself mentioned, many people fill out the voter registration form incorrectly. Due to the so-called Auto Voting Act, you have the opportunity to register every time you visit the BMV.
“Imagine that you are here completely legally,” LaRose described on air. “You have legal status, maybe a student visa or a work visa, and you have circumscribed English skills to start with. You get a voter registration form, you probably just fill it out and don’t ask any questions.
In several cases identified by the Capital Journal’s investigation into voter fraud, foreigners posed as foreigners solely for the purposes of county boards of elections, which were able to process their registration anyway. After reviewing these cases, prosecutors declined to take further action. They argued that this was evidence of confusion, not fraud.
The second reason discrepancies may occur is the time lag between when a person becomes a U.S. citizen and when state agencies hear about it.
“Most likely these are people who recently became citizens and their information is not current,” explained Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio.
New citizens are often encouraged to register to vote as soon as they complete their citizenship oath. However, their citizenship status change only shows up on state records if they take the time to visit everyone’s favorite place – the BMV.
A Capital Journal investigation highlighted the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services program, known as SAVE, as a potential tool the Secretary could operate to recheck flagged registrations on the naturalized citizen list. Several other states already operate it to check voter rolls, and as part of his announcement, LaRose said Ohio would soon join them.
Still, even this program is not a silver bullet. For example, in 2013, Florida relied on SAVE led to the illegal removal of several citizens. Part of the problem is that SAVE does not include information on U.S.-born citizens.
Miller argued that SAVE was simply not cut out for the job.
“It is simply not designed to verify voter registration and leaves much to be desired,” Miller said. “It would be much better if the secretary of state used ERIC, which is designed specifically to improve the accuracy of voter rolls.”
Last year, LaRose withdrew Ohio from the Electronic Enrollment Information Center following a wave of Republican-led states that left the program in response to a series of articles published in The Gateway Pundit. Publication announced bankruptcy a month ago facing a defamation lawsuit filed by two Georgia election workers.
Miller is also frustrated that the Secretary touted fraud allegations without later describing what happened with those cases.
“It would also be very good if the secretary would come back and let us know how often these investigations result in actual examples of attempted voter fraud,” she said. “You know, in my experience, the anomalies detected are usually not like that.”
Answering this question was the focus of a Capital Journal investigation. Of the 641 incidents reported by the Secretary, less than 3% resulted in a conviction. These 13 cases, compared to votes cast since LaRose took office, indicate a voter fraud rate of 0.0001%.
What else does LaRose want
Even though LaRose joins SAVE, he clearly isn’t too joyful about it.
“There is a big bureaucratic process that they make us go through periodically every time we use it,” he told Frantz. “It’s also something we have to pay for every 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 the Social Security Administration. He even wants to know which jurors federal courts reject because they say it could be a determinant in determining citizenship.
To this end, LaRose argued that Congress should do so pass legislation sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-TX, in the House of Representatives “requiring the federal government to make these databases available.”
Roy’s legislation, however, goes a bit further. It also requires voters to present proof of citizenship – in person – in order to register. In a press release, Roy urges that “we must end the practice of non-citizens voting in our elections.”
The thing is, several states have already tried to require proof of citizenship for registration, and result tens of thousands of eligible citizens were denied the right to vote. In 2021, the Washington Court of Appeals outlined these requirements violated federal law.
Follow the OCJ reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.
