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Number of Voters Cleared from Rolls Expected by Week's End

A photo of voters at a polling place
KABIR BHATIA
/
WKSU
Voter registrations were removed in an effort to clear out duplicates or deceased voters.

As of September 6, as many as 200,000 Ohio voter registrations may have been removed from the rolls by county boards of elections. But a final total won’t be available till the end of this week, after they report the numbers they deleted to the state.  

Secretary of State Frank LaRose stresses most of those removed are deceased voters or duplicate registrations. Voting rights groups tried to stop the process because they feared thousands of eligible voters would be removed by mistake, and LaRose admits there are flaws in the system.

“What we saw with this process was some error, some vendor error that is unacceptable,” LaRose said.

LaRose ordered some exemptions – for instance, counties couldn’t delete voters who’ve moved within the county or who are still listed as active in the state’s database. And he says of the original list of 235,000 targeted for removal, 12,500 voters are now active after responding to last-chance mailings or contact with voting rights groups.

Karen is a lifelong Ohioan who has served as news director at WCBE-FM, assignment editor/overnight anchor at WBNS-TV, and afternoon drive anchor/assignment editor in WTAM-AM in Cleveland. In addition to her daily reporting for Ohio’s public radio stations, she’s reported for NPR, the BBC, ABC Radio News and other news outlets. She hosts and produces the Statehouse News Bureau’s weekly TV show “The State of Ohio”, which airs on PBS stations statewide. She’s also a frequent guest on WOSU TV’s “Columbus on the Record”, a regular panelist on “The Sound of Ideas” on ideastream in Cleveland, appeared on the inaugural edition of “Face the State” on WBNS-TV and occasionally reports for “PBS Newshour”. She’s often called to moderate debates, including the Columbus Metropolitan Club’s Issue 3/legal marijuana debate and its pre-primary mayoral debate, and the City Club of Cleveland’s US Senate debate in 2012.