82 non-citizens voted in Ohio, Husted says
Scroll to the bottom of this story to see how many non-citizens are registered to vote in Southwest Ohio.
Nearly 400 non-citizens are registered to vote in Ohio – 82 of whom have managed to cast ballots in at least one election, Secretary of State Jon Husted said Monday.
Husted, a Republican and likely candidate for Ohio governor, said his office discovered the 385 registrations from non-citizens during a biennial review of the state's voter database. In total, 7.9 million people were registered to vote in Ohio as of the November election, so the non-citizens make up fewer than 1 in every 20,000 registered voters – far from the widespread voter fraud President Donald Trump has claimed.
Husted is sending law enforcement the names of the 82 non-citizens who voted, so officials can investigate and decide whether to prosecute. His office will send letters to the non-citizens who registered but never voted, requesting they cancel their registration. If they fail to do so, they could ultimately face prosecution. Election fraud can carry a fifth-degree felony charge in Ohio.
As Trump has alleged voter fraud in last year's election, Husted has countered that election fraud isn't a common problem. Still, his office has boasted of its three reviews of the voter rolls to look for non-citizens, the first such reviews conducted by an Ohio secretary of state.
“In light of the national discussion about illegal voting it is important to inform our discussions with facts. The fact is voter fraud happens, it is rare and when it happens, we hold people accountable,” Husted said Monday in a statement.
Husted didn't say which elections the 82 non-citizens had voted in, but even if they all voted in November 2016, they couldn't have swayed Ohio's presidential result, for instance. Eighty-two votes would have amounted to 0.0015 percent of the state's November voters. None of the non-citizens cast a vote in a race that was tied or decided by one vote, Husted said.
Still, Husted's office chose to report the data during a "highly charged political environment," said Carrie Davis, executive director of Ohio's League of Women Voters.
"Surely, the Secretary's office could have found a less inflammatory way of stating that the office scrutinizes voter rolls for possible errors," Davis said in a statement.
The secretary of state's office began the biennial review in 2013. Reviews that year and in 2015 uncovered a total of 44 non-citizens who voted in an election. Of those, eight people have been convicted of breaking the law and two other cases still are pending, spokesman Josh Eck said.
Trump continues to claim – without any evidence – that massive voter fraud marred the 2016 presidential election.
On Jan. 23, the new president told congressional leaders between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump won the election with a convincing victory in the Electoral College, even as Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes.
Robert Farley of Factcheck.org contributed via USA TODAY
Southwest Ohio data:
Non-citizens' voter registrations data
Butler County: 9 registered to vote, but did not vote; 1 cast a ballot
Clermont County: 0
Hamilton County: 22 registered to vote, but did not vote; 10 cast a ballot
Warren County: 5 registered to vote, but did not vote; 3 cast a ballot
Source: Ohio Secretary of State