Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is defending his decision to recently purge thousands of voter registration records that have been inactive for four years and have failed to update their records within that time.
LaRose’s office purged nearly 27,000 inactive voters from the voter rolls on September 28.
“I’ll NEVER apologize for protecting the integrity of Ohio’s elections. It’s the law. It’s my duty,” LaRose (pictured above) wrote in a social media post Tuesday. “We removed registrations that have (1) moved or died, (2) haven’t voted at their registered address in FOUR YEARS and (3) haven’t responded to multiple rounds of warnings that they’re eligible for removal. They meet ALL three of those criteria.”
I'll NEVER apologize for protecting the integrity of Ohio's elections. It's the law. It's my duty.
We removed registrations that have (1) moved or died, (2) haven’t voted at their registered address in FOUR YEARS and (3) haven’t responded to multiple rounds of warnings that… pic.twitter.com/wtFH1GBjwm
— Frank LaRose (@FrankLaRose) October 31, 2023
LaRose’s comments came on the same day Ohio State Representative Bride Rose Sweeney (D-Westlake) led a group of her Democrat colleagues in calling on the secretary of state to “reverse” his decision to purge such inactive voter registration records, saying it “limits voters’ freedoms.”
“I am calling on the secretary to reverse this voter purge and pause it for all 88 counties until after the election, as he has already done for three counties he cherry-picked,” Sweeney said during a press conference Tuesday. “It is incumbent upon the secretary to provide Ohioans with answers. They deserve to have confidence in our elections.”
In his social media post, LaRose added, “It’s fitting that liberals are trying to help dead people vote on Halloween.”
On Wednesday, the Ohio Democratic Party further accused LaRose of going to “extraordinary lengths to intentionally silence and mislead Ohioans,” not only through his decision to cleanup the state’s voter rolls but his office’s role in wording Issue 1 on the general election ballot.
“LaRose rewrote the ballot language for State Issue 1 in November to be intentionally misleading. Recent polls show that LaRose’s language has a measurable impact on support for State Issue 1 when compared to the original ballot language and could be critical to the outcome despite a majority of Ohioans supporting abortion rights,” the Ohio Democratic Party wrote in a press release.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Frank LaRose” by Frank LaRose. Background Photo “Voting Booths” by Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0.
