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Secretary of State Seeks to Reset Voter Registrations
Sojourner’s Truth Staff
Last month, Ohio Secretary
of State Frank LaRose announced that his office will compile
a statewide list of registered voters who are in danger of
being purged from the voting rolls. The list, which has been
named the “Registration Reset List,” will be made widely
available to political parties, non-profit organizations,
churches and other entities that have an interest in
locating and notifying those in danger of being purged.
The 88 county boards of
elections were given until July 15 to compile their lists
and submit to the Secretary of State’s office.
Under Ohio law, Ohio
elections officials must remove voters from their rolls if
they have not voted within the last six years and haven’t
responded to a mailed notice. The controversial law, which
prompted 276,200 last-chance notices to be mailed in
January, was enforced by LaRose’s predecessor,
then-Secretary of State Jon Husted and upheld by the U.S
Supreme Court last summer.
Husted did not require the
county board of elections to forward their lists to his
office, a policy LaRose changed in June. Now groups such as
the League of Women Voters and the Ohio chapter of the NAACP
are able to obtain copies of the lists in order to reach out
to those in danger of being purged. The plan for some such
groups is to make direct phone calls and knock on doors in
an attempt to locate those on the list, said Jen Miller, the
League of Women’s Voters’ executive director.
Assisting the Secretary of
State with the effort to get the word out is Zach Reed, a
former Cleveland City Councilman who signed up with the
Columbus office earlier this year and has been traveling the
state making connections with local groups who can reach out
to the disenfranchised voters. Reed has been to Toledo
perhaps as many as 10 times already in these past few months
to meet with local group leaders and officials..
While for some groups,
such as the League of Women Voters, the effort is a
non-partisan attempt to reach out to all voters, some
groups, such as the state Republican Party, have plainly
noted that they want to find Republicans to keep on the
rolls.
“The Registration Reset
List is an unprecedented effort to give Ohio’s community and
grassroots organizations a real opportunity to partner with
us in our effort to maintain accurate voter rolls,” said
LaRose. “We want every eligible voter who wants to
participate in the process to have that opportunity, and
this initiative will help make that happen.”
LaRose has called on Ohio to embrace a modernized system
that will make voter rolls more accurate and secure, his
office said in a statement released last week.. Instead of
relying on voters to remember to update their information at
their local board of elections or on the Secretary of State
website, it would require state government to automate this
process. A system that allows Ohioans to seamlessly update
their registration information when they interact with state
government will significantly improve the accuracy of Ohio’s
voter rolls.
Said Spokeswoman Maggie Sheehan: “For the first time, the
Secretary of State’s office is collecting inactive voter
data from the counties that has allowed us to discover minor
discrepancies. Thanks to our efforts, the Registration Reset
List is up-to-date and we certainly hope every inactive
voter on the list takes advantage of the opportunity to
update their information and once again become a full
participant in the democratic process. This situation is a
reminder that the modernized, automated system of
registration proposed by Secretary LaRose would eliminate
these types of issues in the future. We hope this
legislation is swiftly introduced, passed and signed into
law.”
Organizations seeking to
partner with the Secretary of State’s office can email
SecretaryLaRose@OhioSoS.gov.
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