Ohio’s top elections official is expanding an initiative that he said should help local boards of elections keep accurate voter registration records.
According to a news release from Secretary of State Frank LaRose, state law mandates that his office and the 88 Ohio counties’ boards of elections regularly “verify the accuracy of the information in the statewide voter registration database.”
To help comply with state law, last year, the secretary of state’s Office of Data Analytics and Archives, which LaRose announced in July 2023 after the passage of the Data Analysis Transparency Archive (DATA) Act, built a dashboard to identify discrepancies in voter records, such as a mistyped character in a name, address or date of birth.
Now, the office, which recently wrapped up a pilot project to expand the dashboard to include more data types for county boards to resolve, is deploying that expansion to counties across the Buckeye State.
“This program has proved to be incredibly successful, and it’s really the first of its kind not only here in Ohio but across the nation,” LaRose said in a release. “Within the first 60 days of using the expanded data integrity dashboard, the six pilot county boards resolved nearly 97 percent of the issues we flagged.
“The boards have been able to remedy these records 50 times faster with this tool than they did under previous methods,” LaRose added. “It’s been so effective that we can roll this out to every county, proving that Ohio remains the national leader in safeguarding election integrity.”
Last June, LaRose, who is planning to run for state auditor next year, unveiled “county-specific dashboards” to help election officials fix potential voter record discrepancies. The initial iteration of the tool flagged registrations based on a range of problems, including prohibited name characters, registrations before birth or for people under 17 and “impossibly high ages.”
LaRose initially launched county-specific dashboards with six county election boards. After successfully testing, the Secretary of State’s office deployed the tool to all remaining county election boards to help them meet their obligations to research and remedy voter registration anomalies.
The enhanced version LaRose’s office is now rolling out across the state builds on last year’s initial version and flags voter records with “unverifiable identifying information.” This information could include an Ohio driver’s license or state ID number, the last four digits of the Social Security number, date of birth, and people who have died.
“As individuals are constantly registering, moving, or passing away, the voter rolls are the academic definition of a dynamic database,” Clermont County Board of Elections Deputy Director Christopher A. Dennison said in a release. “This new dashboard has been a great tool to help us keep our records accurate and up to date, ensuring sustained confidence in the fair, impartial, and accurate administration of every election.”
Franklin County Board of Elections Director Antone White said in a release that the tool “will continue to be a valuable resource as we prepare for important elections in 2025 and beyond.”
Election security and the integrity of voter rolls have been a hot-button topic, particularly for Republicans, in recent years, and proponents touted 2023’s DATA Act as a “game changer” for election transparency. The Office of Data Analytics and Archives “is dedicated to leveraging innovative solutions to manage election data and promote transparency in Ohio’s electoral process.”
Earlier this year, LaRose announced that, because of the DATA Act, all Ohioans can access daily updates of voter registration changes across all 88 Ohio counties, including new registrations, updates, and removals from voter rolls, through a new online portal.
