Efforts to purge Ohio's voter rolls of inactive voters have drawn a lot of attention. Now you can see if you're one of the roughly 183,000 voters who have had their registration canceled by the state.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, Sept. 27 released a list of those eliminated from the voting rolls due to inactivity. Under Ohio law, voters who haven't cast a ballot in six years and haven't responded to a reminder mailing can be removed from the registration rolls.
The list released by the Secretary of State's office comes ahead of the state's Oct. 7 deadline for voter registration before the November election, giving those removed an opportunity to re-register. As of Sept. 27, however, the list didn't include names of removed voters in Summit, Cuyahoga, Lucas, Tuscawaras and Portage counties due to recent elections in those areas, though that information should be available some time this week.
Democrats have cried foul due to reported irregularities that have led to thousands of active or recent voters being wrongfully removed from the registration lists in Franklin, Cuyahoga, Summit and other counties.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose acknowledged that an error by a software vendor led to at least 1,600 voters being mistakenly included on a list of voters to be purged from the registration list. The Democratic Party, however, says there have been far more mistakes. A coalition of voting rights groups, including the League of Women Voters of Ohio, says it found more than 4,000 active voters on the purge list and another 17,500 who had voted as recently as 2018.
Voters removed from the rolls will still be able to vote via a provisional ballot thanks to a federal appeals court decision last year.