COLUMBUS, Ohio- Secretary of State Frank LaRose has announced that his office has published a list of 158,857 inactive voter registrations eligible for removal from the Statewide Voter Registration Database, marking the latest action in a series of election integrity initiatives that he says are being implemented ahead of the November presidential election.

Ohio voters will also select who will be the U.S. senator in a contest between Republican nominee Bernie Moreno and incumbent Sherrod Brown, a seasoned Cleveland Democrat.

According to LaRose, a Republican, any inactive registration scheduled for removal may be restored to active status prior to July 22, 2024, if the registrant takes one of the following actions:

• Confirms or updates their voter registration, either online at VoteOhio.gov, by mail, or in-person; or

• Engages in voter activity, such as updating or confirming their address with a board of elections or the BMV, submitting an absentee ballot application, or signing a candidate or issue petition that is verified by a board of elections.

Democratic state lawmakers complain that the effort is nothing more than a scheme to purge voter rolls of possible Democratic voters, minorities and poor people, but LaRose says otherwise and that he is merely following the law.

“These registrations are eligible for removal under the law because records show they’re no longer residing or active at the registered address for at least the last four consecutive years,” said LaRose in a statement. “This list has been provided to my office by the county boards of elections after meticulous work under bipartisan oversight. We’re at the last stage of the process, where anyone can now check the list and contact their board of elections if they want to reactivate their registration or if they believe their record might be listed in error.”

During his administration, Secretary LaRose has taken steps to provide greater transparency to the voter registration list maintenance process, becoming the first chief elections officer in the nation to publish inactive registrations eligible for removal from the statewide database. The transparency effort, called Registration Readiness, is part of the office’s overall multi-step election integrity preparedness program being deployed in advance of the high-profile November presidential election, he says. The office previously announced an aggressive effort to identify and remove non-citizen registrations from the rolls, as well as launching routine but enhanced voter list maintenance protocols, including a pilot program designed to assist county boards of elections in better identifying registration discrepancies.

According to Ohio’s county boards of elections, each of the registrations on the 2024 Registration Readiness List have been identified as either:

1)     Voters who filled out a National Change of Address (NCOA) form indicating that they have permanently moved and are therefore no longer eligible to vote at their former address, or

2)     Inactive registrations previously flagged for removal but not yet removed from a county’s voter registration system.

Additionally, in accordance with state and federal law, each of these registrations has been inactive for a period of at least four years. County boards of elections have been instructed by LaRose to complete the removal process by July 22, 2024.

Note: Each county board of elections was required to populate and submit this data to the Secretary of State’s Office pursuant to Directive 2024-06. As of May 19, 2024, this list contains data from all county boards of elections. The data is current as of the date it was generated and depicts the inactive registrations submitted to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. If a registration is canceled due to inactivity and lack of confirmation over a four-year period, an Ohio voter may register again at any time. The Registration Readiness list will not be continuously updated to reflect renewed registrations; however, once a registration has been restored to active status by the county board of elections, the board will ensure it is not removed from the voter rolls.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.