May 25, 2023
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Today, All Voting is Local Ohio, along with 23 organizations and 74 individual voters, sent a letter to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose requesting clarity on his office’s next steps after withdrawing from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) on March 17.
The letter outlined the importance of the nonpartisan tool that has been used to remove people from voter rolls for being ineligible, as well as ensuring voters who are eligible but not registered are added to the rolls. Since its conception, ERIC has reliably ensured that voters were not removed from the rolls in error while also flagging voters who attempted to vote multiple times or while they were ineligible.
“There is currently no viable alternative to ERIC, and previous efforts to create an interstate matching program, such as Crosscheck, failed and resulted in thousands of voters being wrongly identified for removal from voter rolls,” the group wrote. “No other system that currently exists aggregates as much data from so many states and so many government agencies in one place.”
The group requested a meeting with LaRose so he can provide clarity on how he is planning to ensure that voters are not casting ballots in multiple states and how voter rolls will be kept clean and up to date without harming eligible voters.
The letter can be read here.