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0000017a-3b40-d913-abfe-bf44a4f90000Howard Wilkinson joined the WVXU news team as the politics reporter and columnist in April 2012 , after 30 years of covering local, state and national politics for The Cincinnati Enquirer. On this page, you will find his weekly column, Politically Speaking; the Monday morning political chats with News Director Maryanne Zeleznik and other news coverage by Wilkinson. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Wilkinson has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nominating conventions. Along with politics, Wilkinson also covered the 2001 Cincinnati race riots, the Lucasville prison riot in 1993, the Air Canada plane crash at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1983, and the 1997 Ohio River flooding. And, given his passion for baseball, you might even find some stories about the Cincinnati Reds here from time to time.

Husted finds 145 more non-citizens registered to vote - including some in southwest Ohio

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted
State of Ohio

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.

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.