Ohio Secretary of State Violates Court Order With New Citizenship Documentation Requirement

The Ohio Secretary of State should do everything possible to ensure a smooth and fair election. Instead, he’s throwing up last-minute roadblocks — roadblocks that a court has already ruled unconstitutional.

In Ohio, polling station election officials can challenge voters by requiring them to swear in writing that they are eligible. Until this month, voters whose citizenship status was challenged could vote after signing a state form. But earlier this month, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) revised the form to ask contested voters if they are native-born or naturalized citizens and where they were born, and also requires them to provide documentary proof of citizenship. If they cannot provide this proof at the polls, they must vote provisionally and return to the board of elections office with documents by November 9.

This new form, of which LaRose made no effort to advise the public, not only upsets decades of established election procedure, but also violates a court decision of 2006. That ordinance came in a process challenging the same documentation requirement that LaRose just reimposed. The case was brought by several Ohio voters and voting rights groups, represented by the Brennan Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. In the original case, the court ruled that the requirements violated the 14th Amendment and other constitutional protections.

With early voting already underway in Ohio, the unannounced and confusing form could prevent some naturalized citizens from having their vote counted in the election. After learning of this new form, several plaintiffs in the original case and their representatives rushed back to federal court to ask Judge Christopher Boyko to enforce his 2006 order. The judge expedited our emergency motion.

LaRose’s actions come amid a wave of misinformation that casts unfounded doubt about whether states have adequate safeguards to ensure that only citizens vote. In fact, Ohio and other states have extremely effective safeguards. Non-citizen voting is illegal and vanishingly rare.

Even the Ohio Attorney General acknowledges this fact. In a recent press release announcing six indictments against Ohio residents who allegedly voted between 2008 and 2020 when they did not have US citizenship, he said: “Irregularities like this are rare and this is a small number of cases.”

In fact, these charges — even if they lead to conviction — will reflect less than one in every million votes cast in Ohio. And excessively aggressive cleanings of voters flagged based on unreliable citizenship information jeopardized the voting rights of a larger share of naturalized citizen voters.

As we approach Election Day, it is crucial that all Ohioans have equal access to the ballot. Secretary LaRose’s illegal new requirements blatantly infringe on voters’ rights and should be struck down immediately.