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Ohio Secretary of State Plans to Use BMV Records to Increase Voting Numbers

photo of Jon Husted
STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU

 If you have an Ohio driver’s license but are not registered to vote, you should be getting something in your mailbox soon from Ohio’s elections chief. 

Secretary of State Jon Hustedsays the state’s voter rolls are now linked with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles database, so he’s able to make sure Ohio drivers can be voters if they want.

“We also are going to run all of the data that we have available, cross matching with the BMV, to say, “Look, here are a million Ohioans who have driver’s licenses or state I.D.s who are not registered to vote. And we will mail them and ask them to register to vote.”

Husted has worked to get access to the BMV database in an effort to maintain voter rolls.

Husted has removed more than a million people from the voter rolls since 2011 because they have died, have multiple registrations or are inactive voters who haven’t shown up at the polls for years.

Critics have said this “purging” has removed some voters unfairly, which Husted denies.

Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment. Jo started her career in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 80’s when she helped produce a televised presidential debate for ABC News, worked for a creative services company and served as a general assignment report for a commercial radio station. In 1989, she returned back to her native Ohio to work at the WOSU Stations in Columbus where she began a long resume in public radio.