Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose directed Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections to begin the removal process for inactive registrations belonging to individuals who recently registered and voted in another state.
“We have a duty under Ohio law to maintain accurate voter rolls,” said Secretary LaRose. “This is a commonsense safeguard that’s basically designed to prevent double voting. The law says if you’ve changed your registration to another state and then voted in that state’s election, you’re no longer eligible to be registered to vote in Ohio.”
Through multi-state data sharing agreements, the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office of Data Analytics and Archives initially identified nearly 12,000 registrations belonging to individuals who registered and voted in another state in the 2024 general election, effectively rendering them ineligible to vote in Ohio. Under the Secretary’s directive, election officials must send these individuals a cancellation notice before they are formally removed from Ohio’s voter registration database, and any individual who believes their registration might have been flagged in error can appeal to the board of elections in their county of residence.
Ohio already has one of the most comprehensive voter list integrity programs in the nation, having successfully defended its process all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Secretary LaRose’s directive ordering the removal of relocated and inactive registrations builds on a recurring audit process of Ohio’s voter rolls that includes the removal of deceased persons, noncitizens, inactive, and otherwise abandoned registrations.
“Election integrity begins with making sure we have accurate voter rolls,” Secretary LaRose added. “This careful and deliberate list maintenance process is one of the many reasons why other states look to Ohio as the model for election administration.”
