In the midst of preparing for an election that’s a week away, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state is suing the US Department of Homeland Security, to be allowed to use databases he said he's wanted access to for months.
The lawsuit hits as GOP candidates for president and US Senate have claimed that voting by non-citizens, which is illegal, is threatening election security, but the truth is it’s very rare.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose said DHS allows states to access the Systematic Alien Verification and Entitlements (SAVE) database to check citizenship records of Ohio voters. But he said that requires knowing specific immigration verification numbers and also charges a fee.
“There are three other federal databases that DHS is not letting us use even though federal law says very clearly that they're required to make this data available to state level elections officials. I've been trying for months to get access to this," LaRose said, adding that he reached out to US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH 4). "DHS sent us back a response and said, no, we will not allow you to use these federal databases that we believe they're required to let us use. And so I was left with no choice but to file a lawsuit."
LaRose said if he gets access to those three other DHS databases it won’t change anything for this election, but he said now is the time to settle this.
"We will need this data after the election to see if anybody did in fact violate the law so that we can build a case and turn that over to county prosecutors or to the Ohio Attorney General for prosecution," LaRose said. "But this data resulting in removing non-citizens before the 2024 election is of course unlikely or impracticable at this point.”
Attorney General Dave Yost has joined a lawsuit filed by Virginia, which removed voter registrations of 1,600 suspected noncitizens. A federal law says voters can’t be removed within 90 days of an election to prevent qualified voters from being removed by mistake.
LaRose noted that he referred nearly 600 cases of potential voter irregularities to county prosecutors in September. When they didn’t act, he took them to Attorney General Dave Yost, who presented them to grand juries. Last week Yost announced six indictments for illegal non-citizen voting, but will dismiss one of those after the Cuyahoga County prosecutor said that accused voter has been dead for nearly two years.
