Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has issued a directive to continue the review and removal of 62 registrants who are found to be noncitizens by Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) data and through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. Ohio has 8.1 million registered electors.

“Ohioans have issued a clear and constitutional mandate that in our state, American elections are only for American citizens,” said Secretary LaRose.

“It’s my duty under the law to ensure our voter registration rolls are honest and accurate, and we’re doing that more aggressively than ever before by converting what used to be an annual citizenship audit to part of our ongoing, routine voter list maintenance protocols.”

The Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division and Office of Data Analytics and Archives recently completed a review of identification records provided by the Ohio BMV. In the first round of 2025 searches, the data found 62 voter registrations assigned to Ohio residents who were identified as noncitizens.

The boards of elections are directed to remove registrations of individuals who 1) fail to respond to notices sent by the Secretary of State’s office seeking confirmation of citizenship or cancellation of their voter registration, 2) have submitted documentation self-identifying as a noncitizen to the BMV, and 3) have been confirmed as noncitizens in the federal SAVE database system.

Secretary LaRose has been leading an effort on behalf of states nationally to reach an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security on improved access to federal citizenship records for use in voter verification.

“I’m confident that with this new administration, we’ll be able to give states better access to these records so we can more effectively enforce citizenship voting requirements,” he added.

In 2022, Ohio voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment, with over 76 percent of the vote, stating that only United States citizens may vote in all elections in the state of Ohio.

State and federal law require maintaining accurate voter registration records. Further, the passage of the DATA Act clarified that boards of elections are required to remove individuals who are not legally registered or eligible to vote from the voter rolls.

Any individual removed during this process will receive a notice from the board of elections and may request a hearing to appeal the removal by providing adequate proof of citizenship. Individuals removed from the registration database may also cast a provisional ballot and prove their citizenship within the four-day cure period.

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