Ohio’s voter purge 'disproportionately targets voters of color'

The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s voter purge disproportionately goes after voters of color, Ohio civil rights organizations argue.

More than half of Ohio voters who might be purged from the state’s voter rolls are registered in counties where a majority of the population is people of color, said Ohio Unity Coalition Executive Director Pierrette Talley.

“It appears to me that this purge disproportionately targets voters of color, many of whom have long been disenfranchised from the political process, either because of discriminatory barriers that prevent them from exercising their power to vote or people’s life circumstances that have prevented them from being able to fully participate in our democracy,” she said during a Tuesday press conference.

Last month, LaRose published a list of 158,857 inactive voter registration who were eligible to be removed from the Statewide Voter Registration Database — meaning they would be purged from voter rolls and not able to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. County board of elections had until Monday to finish their voter purge.

LaRose’s office did not respond to questions about when they would have a final list of purge voters or about the accusation the purge disproportionately affects voters of color.

“What our politicians should be focusing on is expanding voting rights rather than trying to restrict them,” said Bria Bennett, the communications director for Ohio Organizing Collaborative.

A registered voter could be on the list if they filled out a change-of-address form with the U.S. Postal Service signaling they have moved or they have not voted at their registered address in the past four years after being marked for removal by a county’s voter registration system. The voter purge is part of Ohio’s process of updating its rolls and removing voters who have moved out-of-state or died.

There has to be a better way to clean Ohio’s voter roll, said Deidra Reese, voter engagement director at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative.

“This ability to take people off the rolls is saying people who have affirmatively registered to vote will not be able to vote simply because of a procedural issue, that’s just not fair,” she said. “It is not proper to say people who meet those regulations should be taken off the roll. … We just want people who are eligible to actually be able to vote and not have barriers and particularly not to disproportionately impact voters of color.”

Talley is disappointed the voter purge is happening.

“People should be allowed to opt out of any election and they should certainly not live in an environment where if you don’t exercise your right to vote that you lose your right to vote,” she said.

Voting is an essential part of democracy, said President of the Ohio Conference NAACP Tom Roberts.

“By definition, democracy means people rule and our democracy works best when every voter can participate in this democracy and voting is one of the most public ways of sharing the work of a democracy,” he said.

A voter whose registration has been purged can regain their ability to vote by reregistering on the Secretary’s registration website or by visiting their county board of elections.

The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7.