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 that’s way down from previous elections.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose says 104 people registered illegally, and 13 voted illegally. He said his office cross-matched the voter rolls in the statewide voter registration database with the BMV’s and found discrepancies on citizenship.
After trying to contact them, he’s asking Ohio’s attorney general 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 says.
If the attorney general determines the next step is prosecution, that would be up to county prosecutors. 354 cases of non-citizens registering or votingwere turned over investigators after the 2018 vote, and 385 were identified in 2016.
The 104 possible cases of non-citizen registration represent .0012% of the 8,073,829 registered voters in 2020. The 13 possible cases of non-citizen voting represent .0002% of the 5,974,121 ballots cast in the 2020 election.
