List of 116,000 people set to be removed from rolls after election included thousands of eligible voters
From the Guardian:
More than 10,000 people who Ohio believed had “abandoned” their voter registration cast ballots in the 2020 election, raising more concern that officials are using an unreliable and inaccurate method to identify ineligible voters on the state’s rolls.
In August, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, released a list of 115,816 people who were set to be purged after the November election because the election officials in each of Ohio’s 88 counties flagged them as inactive. Voters could remove their name from the list by taking a number of election-related actions, including voting, requesting an absentee ballot, or simply confirming their voter registration information.
Last week, LaRose’s office announced that nearly 18,000 people on the initial list did not have their voter registration canceled, including 10,000 people who voted in the November election. About 98,000 registrations were ultimately removed from the state’s rolls, LaRose’s office announced last month. There are more than 8 million registered voters in the state.
In a statement, LaRose said the fact that so many people prevented their voter registrations from being canceled is a success of the state’s unprecedented efforts to notify voters at risk of being purged. But voting rights groups say the fact that Ohio nearly purged thousands of eligible voters is deeply alarming and underscores the inaccurate and haphazard way the state goes about maintaining its voter rolls.
Read the full story at The Guardian