LaRose announces data integrity pilot program to improve accuracy of Ohio voter rolls
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced Thursday the launch of a new pilot program designed to assist county boards of elections with maintaining accurate voter registration records.
The data integrity effort, designed by the Secretary of State’s Office of Data Analytics and Archives, centers on the deployment of county-specific digital dashboards designed to help election officials identify discrepancies in their voter rolls that require additional review.
“We have a duty under the law to maintain accurate voter rolls, and that requires constant vigilance,” said Secretary LaRose. “Hundreds of times every day, a registered voter dies, moves, changes a name or cancels a registration. We also have records that for many years have been manually entered into the system from a hand-written form. That process can sometimes lead to human error, and this program will help our county elections officials more effectively clear up these issues.”
LaRose said the pilot program will provide data integrity portals to six counties, including Clermont, Franklin, Gallia, Lake, Lucas and Warren. The counties will be able to access digital dashboards that show the number of registration records flagged for potential errors, such as illegal characters in name fields, placeholder birth dates, unreasonably high ages and improper birth/registration date combinations. Counties will also see a clear summary of the number of resolved records and the average resolution time.
“You must have accurate voter rolls to conduct elections,” said Brian Sleeth, past president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials and director of the Warren County Board of Elections. “We support Secretary LaRose’s effort to help the counties do this important voter list maintenance work, and we look forward to making the pilot program a success that can be rolled out statewide.”
The launch of the pilot data program follows a series of election integrity initiatives announced recently by Secretary LaRose ahead of the November election. These include directives to Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections to:
• Review and initiate the removal of any voter registration records confirmed by law as inactive for the last four years due to a change of address.
• Revisit and remove registrations previously confirmed as inactive but remaining on the voter rolls after the required four-year waiting period.
• Remove registrations confirmed as inactive for four years after an acknowledgement notice was returned as undeliverable.
• Remove registrations confirmed as inactive for four years after being flagged for a mismatched record with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
• Complete an annually required audit of the statewide voter registration database.
• Initiate the removal process of 137 registered voters confirmed to be non-citizens.
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