LaRose urges Congress to support ongoing citizenship audits of state voter rolls
Secretary of State Frank LaRose joined five fellow Secretaries of State this week to appear before the U.S. House Committee on Administration on efforts to build public confidence in the upcoming November election.
Secretary LaRose testified before the committee at the invitation of Chairman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, specifically to highlight the ongoing effort to audit Ohio’s voter rolls for compliance with constitutional citizenship voting requirements.
“I’m taking every step currently possible to ensure that Ohio’s voter rolls remain clean, but we’ve done this with little to no help from the federal government,” Secretary LaRose told the committee. “Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security has been unresponsive to my office’s demand for access to federal citizenship verification records. This is exactly why your leadership to pass the federal SAVE Act in the House earlier this summer is a critical step.”
Secretary LaRose has championed passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and give states no-cost access to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration databases to help with enforcement. The House passed the SAVE Act in July, but it remains stalled in the U.S. Senate.
Separately, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office has sent four appeals to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking the Biden-Harris administration to grant access to additional DHS databases, specifically the Person Centric Query Service (PCQS) database, the Person Centric Identity Services (PCIS) database, and the Central Index System 2. DHS has refused to respond. The latest appeal, sent today, threatened legal action if DHS does not respond by Friday, Sept. 13.
The letter reminds DHS of its legal obligation to respond to state inquiries regarding citizenship status, specifically citing a provision in federal law that DHS shall respond to an inquiry by a federal, state or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency for any purpose authorized by law, by providing the requested verification or status information.
Federal law makes clear that States are authorized to receive DHS information regarding the status of noncitizens, and that no contrary rule may restrict that guaranteed access.
Notwithstanding any other provision of federal, state or local law, no state or local government entity may be prohibited, or in any way restricted, from sending to or receiving from the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of an alien in the United States.
“It’s essential that the Biden-Harris administration grant us access to all federal database records necessary for these investigations, which they have yet to do,” LaRose testified. “Every moment of every day is critical to ensuring a secure, successful election. We urgently need our federal partners to work with, not against, these efforts.”
Here in Ohio, Secretary LaRose recently referred nearly 600 noncitizen registration and voting violations to the proper authorities after the latest round of audits. Last month, he sent a letter to legislative leaders asking for state authority to add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to Ohio’s voter registration forms, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a similar form in the state of Arizona. He also is currently appealing a federal court ruling that bans enforcement of Ohio’s new law prohibiting foreign funding of state ballot issue campaigns.
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