Ohio elections officials reached a data sharing agreement with President Donald Trump‘s administration that will help clean up and maintain the state’s voter rolls.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced the new agreement on Monday, saying it guarantees Ohio access to enhanced federal records for at least 20 years. The deal refers to the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, which previously had limited and costly availability to state election officials.
LaRose says Monday’s agreement with the Department of Homeland Security guarantees Ohio the capability to obtain verifiable data supporting each citizen verification as well as the ability to perform bulk verification requests.
“Ohio has a duty to ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote, and this agreement gives us the tools to do that job right,” LaRose said. “I appreciate the Trump administration for working with us to deliver long-term access to the federal data needed to protect election integrity.”
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The agreement concludes a lawsuit LaRose filed against the DHS under former President Joe Biden. The previous administration had withheld access to SAVE data and also charged states for access on a per-query basis.
LaRose’s office has already removed tens of thousands of wrongful voter registrations in Ohio since before the 2024 election. He referred over 1,000 noncitizens to the DOJ for potential prosecution in October after determining that they “appear to have registered to vote unlawfully in Ohio.”
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His office said that of the 1,084 cases, 167 of the individuals appeared to have cast a ballot in a federal election since 2018.
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The cases included 99 individuals who appear to have voted in two states in the same federal election; 16 people who appear to have voted twice in Ohio in the same federal election; 14 who appear to have voted in a federal election after the date of their death; four who appear to have engaged in ballot harvesting and two who registered at an unlawful residence.
LaRose’s office also removed over 155,000 voter registrations that were confirmed to be abandoned and inactive for at least four consecutive years.
