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Last fall, the Republican majority in the Ohio General Assembly created a snipe hunt for that rarest of creatures: the non-citizen casting a ballot in an Ohio election.
If you were in Scouts as a kid, you probably know how a snipe hunt works. You take the greenest of the green campers, hand them a burlap sack and a flashlight and tell them to go out in the woods and wait to catch a non-existent creature: the “snipe.”
Then the veteran campers go back to the campfire and laugh their fool heads off at the knucklehead rookie who waited up all night waiting to catch a critter that is not real.
Good joke, eh?
Well, that is more or less what the Republicans in the Ohio Statehouse created last fall with the passage of Senate Bill 293.
Mike DeWine, the Republican governor, signed it into law, despite saying a while back he didn’t believe Ohio’s voting system needed any more “reforms.”
Here’s what Senate Bill 293 does:
- It eliminates the four-day grace period for mail-in ballot to arrive at boards of elections by the close of the polls on Election Day, rather than just being postmarked by that day.
- It requires the secretary of state to monthly, automated purges of voter rolls, flagging those who may be non-citizens.
- It will likely increase the number of people forced to cast provisional ballots, which are more likely to be rejected.
So are there such cases of non-citizens casting ballots to be found?
Yes, there are, but they are incredibly few and far between.
Last fall, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, referred to the U.S. Department of Justice the cases of 1,084 non-citizens “who appear to have registered to vote.”
That number includes 167 who “appear to have cast ballots” in Ohio’s federal elections since 2018.
In those elections — 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 — approximately 24.5 million Ohioans cast ballots.
The 167 — even if they are guilty of the offense — have had no impact on elections. Believing otherwise is something like dumping a bucket of water into the Atlantic Ocean and expecting the sea level to rise.
“Non-citizens voting is so rare as to be virtually non-existent,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio.
That’s why the League, along with the Northern Ohio Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus last week, naming LaRose as the sole defendant. The ACLU is representing them in the case.
The suit claims that carrying out the mandates of Senate Bill 293 violates the National Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment guarantee of due process.
The major flaw in the SB 293 plan is that it depends on information from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the federal SAVE database to flag potential non-citizens who are registered to vote.
“Both of those databases are seriously outdated,” Miller said. “Many of those who were on those rolls as non-citizens have now become naturalized citizens, with full voting rights.”
And, she said, Senate Bill 293 is placing an unfunded and undue burden on the state’s 88 county boards of elections.
“Election officials have enough on their hands without dealing with this,” Miller said.
Ben Kindel, LaRose’s press secretary, said his boss is not concerned about the lawsuit.
"Frivolous and unfounded lawsuits are nothing new for these groups," Kindel said. “We are confident the legislation passed by the Ohio General Assembly complies with federal law."
LaRose may dismiss it as a frivolous lawsuit, but voting rights advocates say it is absolutely necessary to sort out what the long-term effects of Senate Bill 293 will be.
“At the end of the day, we’re spending a lot of time on this for very bad reasons,” Miller said. “Ultimately, we have lawmakers chasing problems that don’t exist.”
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