A ballot counter machine. (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original story.)
Another election has come and gone in Ohio with no reports of widespread fraud. That hasn’t stopped a handful of Republican state senators from advancing legislation to place new restrictions on how Ohioans cast their ballots.
State Sen. Niraj Antani, R-Miamisburg, has put forward a bill requiring Ohioans show proof of citizenship to register to vote or update their existing registration. Sens. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, and Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, filed another bill imposing proof of citizenship requirements, and the elimination of ballot drop boxes.
That state legislation takes its cue from efforts at the federal level backed by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. That proposal, known as the SAVE Act, had little chance of passage with Democrats in control of the U.S. Senate. Now, with a Republicans in control of all three branches of government, it stands a better chance of passing.
It’s already illegal to register or vote as a non-citizen at the state and federal level. Despite that threat of criminal prosecution, backers still worry current law allows voters to register with little more than a promise.
It appears that approach has worked exceptionally well, though. Actual reviews of the voter rolls have found cases of actual fraud are vanishingly rare and nowhere close to enough to affect the outcome of races.
What’s more, the effort to protect voting by demanding citizenship documentation, risks disenfranchising eligible citizens. One University of Maryland study estimated 21 million Americans don’t have ready access to the required documents. After Kansas imposed similar requirements about a decade ago, more than 30,000 voters had their registration suspended or canceled.
Proof of citizenship
Both measures lay out the same list of documents for verifying citizenship. A U.S. Passport, birth certificate or naturalization certificate will all work, but they lean heavily on existing records held by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Lawmakers seem to envision a system in which most initial registrations or updates get verified behind the scenes, with county boards checking with the BMV that it received citizenship documents when a voter got their license.
For people whose information doesn’t match, for instance due to a name change, marriage or divorce, they’ll need to provide a court order or marriage certificate.
In a press release, Brenner framed their proposal as strengthening laws and adding protections “so that Ohioans continue to know there is a reliable system in place when they cast their vote.”
Gavarone insisted Ohio remains the “gold standard” for election integrity, but that her bill “addresses areas of the election law we can improve, including an extra layer of protection to enforce our state constitution’s citizenship requirement.”
“This is a simple fix that strengthens trust and integrity in our institutions,” she added.
But the proposals could actually see Ohio sacrificing simplicity in the name of security. Federal law does not require proof of citizenship to vote, and so even if lawmakers approve some version of the requirement, they can only really apply it to state forms and state elections. As in Arizona, Ohio voters would still be able to register with federal forms, but they would only be able to vote in federal elections, and ineligible to sign initiative petitions.
Dropboxes
While Antani’s proposal sticks to the citizenship requirements, Brenner and Gavarone go a step further and outlaw the use of ballot drop boxes. Although there have been no credible allegations of voter fraud tied to drop boxes, they have been a persistent bugaboo for skeptics.
In the most recent election, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose imposed rules effectively limiting their use to individual voters dropping off their own ballot. In an August letter, he urged state lawmakers to consider removing drop boxes altogether.
Apparently Brenner and Gavarone were listening.
Their legislation restricts ballot drop-offs to hand delivery — explicitly prohibiting board from accepting ballots “returned by personal delivery to an unattended receptacle.”
According to the Secretary of State’s early vote dashboard, voters aiming to get their ballot in early were far more likely to vote early in person or mail in their absentee ballot. The roughly 181,000 ballots returned by drop box represented less than 7% of the total. Mail ballots and early in person ballots accounted for 31% and 59% respectively.
Gavarone justified the drop box rollback with reference to incidents in Oregon and Washington where incendiary devices were placed in drop boxes.
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