Ohio's Top Elections Chief Wants 117 Non-Citizens Investigated For Possible Election Fraud

Ohio’s top elections official has asked the state’s attorney general to investigate 117 people who either registered to vote in Ohio or actually cast a ballot in the 2020 election but are non-citizen legal residents.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose said 104 people registered illegally and 13 voted illegally. He said his office cross-matched voter rolls in the statewide voter registration database with Bureau of Motor Vehicles records and found citizenship discrepancies.

Under Ohio law, each of the non-citizens were sent two notices to the address where they are registered to vote, requesting they either cancel their voter registration or show they have become citizens. After trying to contact the individuals, LaRose is asking Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to investigate. 

“Registering to vote or voting as a non-citizen constitutes a fifth-degree felony, which makes you subject to deportation, so that’s one of the reasons we want to be so careful about this,” LaRose said Monday.

If Yost’s office determines the next step is prosecution, it would be up to county prosecutors to take on the cases.

The number of questionable voter registrations in the 2020 election is down significantly from previous years. After the 2018 vote, Ohio had 354 cases of non-citizens registering or voting turned over to investigators and 385 such cases were identified in 2016.

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