An audit by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is clearing the state’s voter rolls of about 155,000 ineligible voters, including nearly 500 “noncitizen” voter registrations.

LaRose on Thursday announced the removal of 499 noncitizen registrations in the latest round of a multi-phase, comprehensive audit of Ohio’s voter registration database ahead of the November election.

The noncitizens, who have twice confirmed their citizenship status to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, are in addition to nearly 155,000 registrations removed last week that were confirmed to be abandoned or inactive for at least four consecutive years.

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“I swore an oath to uphold the constitution of our state, and that document clearly states that only United States citizens can participate in Ohio elections,” LaRose said in a statement. “That means I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country aren’t voting. If or when they do become citizens, I’ll be the first one to congratulate them and welcome them to the franchise, but until then the law requires us to remove ineligible registrations to prevent illegal voting.”

The efforts to remove ineligible voters began in May with a review initiated by LaRose’s Pubic Integrity Division in coordination with the Office of Data Analytics and Archives, focused on ensuring compliance with the state’s constitutional citizenship requirement.

The removals announced Thursday involve individuals who reported their noncitizen status to the BMV, which was then confirmed through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database. Those individuals failed to respond to notices from the Secretary of State asking them to either confirm their citizenship status or cancel their registration, but can cast provisional ballots that can be counted with proof of citizenship.

“I want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and say that most of them didn’t intend to break the law,” said LaRose. “We want to make sure a mistaken registration doesn’t become an illegal vote. We also want to make sure that lawfully registered citizens can participate seamlessly in the process, especially if their citizenship status changed recently.”

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The ongoing proactive approach to ensuring election integrity in Ohio stands in stark contrast to efforts by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to keep ineligible voters on her state’s voter rolls.

Benson is named in an ongoing 2021 lawsuit from the Public Interest Legal Foundation that aims to remove over 26,000 deceased residents from the state’s active voter list, and another from the Republican National Committee filed in March targeting impossibly high voter registration numbers in 53 of Michigan’s 83 counties.

While there’s no dispute that Michigan’s 8.1 million registered voters represents 105% of the state’s voting age population, Benson’s Bureau of Elections argues federal election laws prevent officials from removing inactive registrations for two election cycles without personal contact from the voter.

A PILF investigation highlighted why that’s unlikely to happen for many, documenting numerous registered voters who died decades ago.

Both the PILF and RNC lawsuits contend Benson’s inaction in clearing Michigan’s voter registrations of ineligible voters violates the National Voter Registration Act, and both want a judge to order Benson to comply ahead of the November election.

“More than 50 Michigan counties have a 100% or higher rate of voter registration,” then RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told the Detroit Free Press when the RNC first raised the issue with Benson in December. “This is mathematically impossible and means that ineligible voters are on the rolls ahead of the upcoming 2024 election.”

The RNC lawsuit notes that in three Michigan counties – Kalkaska, Keweenaw and Mackinac – the number of registered voters is 114% of the voting age population, while in the state’s most populous counties of Macomb, Oakland and Wayne it’s 101%.

In addition to the 53 counties with voter registrations over 100% of the voting age population, another 23 have rates that exceed 90%, a figure that far eclipses the voter registration rate nationwide in recent elections, according to the RNC lawsuit.

An analysis by Bridge Michigan in March found 625,913 Michigan voter registrations are slated to be canceled in the coming years – 531,877 in 2025 and another 94,036 in 2027 – but rather than proactively work to eliminate concerns about election integrity by betting those registrations, Benson’s election director Jonathan Brater has vowed to ensure they won’t be removed until they time out under federal law.

“We’re certainly going to be monitoring any activity in the voter file that looks unusual to make sure that there aren’t undue challenges that are being processed without the voter getting their legally entitled protections,” he told Bridge.

At least 91,928 inactive voters, meanwhile, remain on a permanent mail ballot list and “must be issued an absent voter ballot” under state law because they have not been removed, according to the RNC.

“Tens of thousands of absentee ballots will this be sent to voters at addresses where they no longer reside or to voters who are otherwise ineligible to receive them, creating the potential for thousands of absentee ballots to be cast fraudulently,” the RNC wrote in a May letter to Benson.

While Benson told the Free Press the lawsuits that aim to purge the state’s voter rolls are “filled with baseless accusations that seek to diminish people’s faith in the security of our elections,” others are outlining how some are leveraging the situation in Detroit.

Ramon Jackson found numerous former Detroit residents including himself who were registered to vote years after moving away from the Motor City, including folks he knows have never voted in their lives.

Jackson’s investigation, which started with efforts to recall a city council member, revealed former Detroit residents who were registered as permanent absentee voters without their consent or permission at addresses that included vacant homes or where they no longer lived.

“There are dozens of others who meet this pattern; fraudulently listed as registered voters and fake votes cast on behalf of these voters,” Jackson wrote in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that was ultimately dismissed for lack of legal standing.