Secretary of State Jon Husted has said several times that voter fraud is rare but it exists – and that’s why he says he reviews the voting rolls in Ohio’s 88 counties.
Husted has found hundreds who shouldn’t be registered to vote, and wants the federal government to help him find more.
Some of them are in southwest Ohio.
Husted’s latest review found 145 non-citizens registered to vote, with 27 of them actually casting ballots. This brings the total number of non-citizens registered in Ohio to 436, out of about 7.7 million registered voters.
A relative handful of the non-citizens found in Husted’s 2015 review come from four southwest Ohio counties – Hamilton, Clermont, Butler and Warren.
The latest review found:
- 14 non-citizens registered in Hamilton County, but only two of them had voted.
- Two in Clermont County, but only one had voted.
- Two in Butler County – neither of whom had voted.
- One in Warren County, who had not voted.
Husted says these are felonies, but likely are mistakes – but they need to be caught. Statewide, in the 2015 review, Husted has referred the cases of 27 voters to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine for investigation.
“How many violations of the law should we tolerate before we think it’s a big deal?,” Husted said. “I don’t think it’s any.”
These non-citizens were found with Bureau of Motor Vehicles data. Husted has asked the federal government for access to the Social Security numbers of non-citizens as well.