What is the current state of Ohio’s voter rolls? How well are Ohio’s current Secretary of State, Frank LaRose (who, by the way, is currently up for re-election in 2022) and our county Boards of Election maintaining our voter rolls?
The short answer to these questions is “NOT VERY WELL”. OVC’s analysis of Ohio’s statewide voter registration database reveals many issues and potential problems. As you review the issues below ask: would you tolerate these kinds of issues from your bank, credit card company, or any company you do business with. Isn’t your vote just as important?
OVC reached out to the SoS office in February 2022 and offered our assistance to verify and review our findings with them. To date, despite several inquiries from OVC, the SoS office has been unable to arrange time for a detailed review.
Here is a summary of the issues we identified in our March 2022 report based on the Nov 2021 voter rolls:
NO AUDIT – Apparently, the SOS has not conducted the annual audit required by ORC 3503.15(D)(5) for several years.
NAME DATA INTEGRITY ISSUES
• 11,333 records with unallowed characters in the last name. 156 records with unallowed characters in the first name. 417 instances of unallowed characters in the middle name.
• Nov 2020 voters include “CY .”, “. SUNDANCE”, “. DOC” and several similar.
• 2,487 incidents of non-alphabetic characters in name fields, many with apostrophe or dash, but several with numbers. “7 SIMOVART”, “12255110 12255110”, and, “Gregory A 9801033” voted in Nov 2020.
• Abnormal Names/Likely Data Entry Errors – 73 unusually short names, 321 names with no vowels. E.g., “David Brian H”, “SIR L”, “Kalpana KB”, “Ritesh KC”, “Joan M”, “DAVID L S”, “Trisha A X”, “Gemini X” are all Nov 2020 voters.
DATE INTEGRITY ISSUES
• 342 records with invalid birth dates (either 1/1/1800 or 1/1/1900)
• 20 Nov 2020 voters who are 115-122 years old
• 277,625 voter registrations on 1/1 – a holiday when offices are closed (251,000 voted in Nov 2020)
• 358 voter registrations on Dec 25 (250 voted in Nov 2020 and 23 of those registered on 12/25/20 after the election.)
• 3,232 voter registrations on July 4 (2446 voted in Nov 2020)
• 223 voters registered prior to being born (171 voted in Nov 2020)
• 796 voters with a birth date on or before 1/1/1900 (127 voted Nov 2020)
• 63,664 invalid registration dates (59,533 voted Nov 2020)
• 253 voters registered prior to 11/3/2020 but are 18 after 11/3/2020
• 114 voters registered prior to 11/2/2021, but are 18 after 11/2/2021
• 3,730 voters registered prior to their 17th birthday (2554 voted 11/3/2020)
• 5 persons voted before they were born
• 724 persons voted in a general election before their 18th birthday
ADDRESS DATA INTEGRITY ISSUES
• 4,970 records have unallowed characters in the street address
• 19,738 records use unallowed secondary indicators in the address
• 112,408 records us non-standard highway designations
• 4 records have invalid zip codes and addresses
• 162 voters have an address at a UPS Store
• Double <space> characters in many addresses disguise potential duplicate records.
DUPLICATE REGISTERED VOTERS
14,268 records are potential duplicate and 293 potential triplicate registrations
DEAD REGISTERED VOTERS
• 13,888 voter registrations have matching death records
• 9,624 voter registrations with matching death records have ACTIVE status
• 123 voter registrations with date of death prior to 10/4/20 voted in the Nov 2020 Presidential election.
• 15 voter registrations with date of death prior to 10/3/21 voted in the Nov 2021 general election.
VOTER STATUS ISSUES
• 80,012 Nov 2020 voters’ status changed to CONFIRMATION after the election (23,706 were newly registered in 2020). Why would so many active voters, newly registered voters so quickly become questionable registrations?
SYNC ISSUES BETWEEN COUNTY AND THE STATEWIDE DATABASES
Missing records (county 11/27/21 data and SOS 11/27/21 data)
| County | Number of Voters in County but not in SOS SWVF | Number of Voters in SOS SWVF but not in County |
| Cuyahoga | 1,233 | 1,893 |
| Delaware | 160 | 1 |
| Franklin | 257 | 17 |
| Greene | 125 | 0 |
| Lorain | 96 | 458 |
| Lucas | 123 | 0 |
| Mahoning | 46 | 0 |
| Montgomery | 106 | 0 |
| Stark | 2 | 0 |
| Summit | 125 | 2 |
| Warren | 92 | 0 |
Consistency of Names, Dates, Status, and Voting History Between County and State Databases
Franklin County
• 11 records have different last names,
• 9 have different first names,
• 9 have different middle names,
• 1 has different birth year,
• 41,913 had different registrations dates,
• 7819 have different voting history for Nov 2020, and
• 2081 records disagree on whether the voter is ACTIVE or in CONFIRMATION status.
Cuyahoga County
• 4 records are missing a value for SOS_VOTERID,
• 311 records have different last names,
• 100 have different first names,
• 812 have different middle names,
• 17 have different birth year
• 8,470 had different registrations dates,
• 4,186 have different voting history for Nov 2020, and
• 3,389 records disagree on whether the voter is ACTIVE or in CONFIRMATION status
Lorain County
• 70 records have different last names,
• 5 records had different first names,
• 41 records had different middle names,
• 2 records had different birth dates,
• 1921 records had different voting history the Nov 2020, and
• 110 records disagree on whether the voter is ACTIVE or in CONFIRMATION status.
Mahoning County
• Nov 2020 voting history did not agree for 2391 records
Stark County
• Nov 2020 voting history did not agree for 2391 records
Lucas County
• Two records have different names, and
• 1237 records have different voting history for Nov 2020.
Summit County
• 2,835 records have different voting history for the Nov 2020 election.
Warren County
• 83 records have different voting history for the Nov 2020 election.
Delaware County
• 3,364 records have different voting history for the Nov 2020 election
Montgomery County
• 3,522 records have different voting history for the Nov 2020 election.
• Two records in the county file are missing a SOS_VOTERID value