Voter accuracy program going statewide in Ohio

(The Center Square) – A pilot program targeting the accuracy of voter rolls in Ohio is now going statewide.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently announced a new voter data integrity program that began in six counties and is now going statewide. The program uses county-specific digital dashboards to help identify voter registration discrepancies.

“These data entry discrepancies are not commonly indicative of fraud or irregularities, but they must be resolved in order to comply with our shared statutory responsibility to maintain the accuracy of the statewide voter registration database,” LaRose said.

As previously reported by The Center Square, LaRose spokesman Ben Kindel told The Center Square the dashboard is another tool local officials will use during regular list maintenance processes, which happen daily and weekly. Before the dashboard was created, local boards managed their systems.

Kindel also said most voter registration errors come when officials mistakenly hit the wrong keyboard stroke when updating forms or improper transcriptions from hand-filled registration forms.

The dashboards give county boards of election access to dashboards that show the number of registration records flagged for potential errors, such as illegal characters in name fields, placeholder birth dates, unreasonably high ages and improper birth/registration date combinations.

Mistakes were often made because information was manually entered into the state’s database from handwritten forms over the years.

“Many of Ohio’s registration records have been manually entered into the system from a handwritten form, which can sometimes lead to data entry errors,” LaRose said. "This innovative tool will help every county election office to clear up these issues more effectively, and I look forward to building on the success of the pilot program as we get ready for the November election."

With the new dashboards, election officials are now required to review and fix errors that include prohibited name characters, placeholder birth dates, registration before birth and registration under 17 years old.