Secretary LaRose orders latest round of noncitizen removals from Ohio voter rolls

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced today that an additional 75 noncitizen voter registrations have been removed from Ohio's voter rolls as part of an ongoing citizenship verification and voter list maintenance effort.

“American elections are only for American citizens,” said Secretary LaRose. "Ohio continues to lead the nation by using every tool available to enforce that constitutional requirement. With improved access to federal citizenship data, we continue to identify ineligible registrations more efficiently while maintaining safeguards to protect eligible Ohio voters.”

Under Secretary LaRose’s administration, Ohio has significantly expanded its citizenship verification efforts. What began as a statutorily required annual review of the Statewide Voter Registration Database has evolved into an ongoing process using state and federal data, including records from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), Social Security Administration (SSA), and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program.

More than 1,300 agencies nationwide use SAVE to support their benefit eligibility and licensing determinations.

Ohio’s process includes safeguards designed to ensure eligible citizens are not improperly removed. Records identified for review are individually investigated, and federal SAVE records are manually reviewed before a final noncitizen determination is provided to the Secretary of State’s office. The Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division also reviews the information as part of the verification process.

Ohio has also secured long-term access to the federal SAVE system, giving election officials an important federal resource for verifying citizenship status and strengthening the state’s ongoing voter list maintenance efforts. Ohio and other states across the country continue to fight efforts by activist groups to restrict access to this tool that has proven effective for election integrity. Just this week, President Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore states’ access to the expanded SAVE System ahead of the November election.

Eligible Ohioans who have recently become naturalized citizens and believe federal records do not accurately reflect their citizenship status are encouraged to contact U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) at 800-375-5283 or visit USCIS.gov for information about obtaining citizenship documentation or correcting their records.

Ohio law also provides protections for eligible voters whose registrations may be canceled in error. A voter may challenge a cancellation by providing proof of citizenship, and an eligible voter whose registration was improperly canceled will have their registration restored as though the cancellation never occurred.