COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose filed an election-related lawsuit in federal court Thursday against the Biden Administration.
LaRose says the Department of Homeland Security has failed to give Ohio access to federal citizenship verification records needed to prevent those who are not U.S. citizens from voting.
LaRose says the state can use the federal Systematic Alien Verification and Entitlements (SAVE) database to verify citizenship, but says the Biden Administration is denying Ohio access to three other federal databases.
"The federal government is required to make this data available, and I believe we'll win this case and be able to access that citizenship data we need to verify only American citizens are voting," LaRose said.
LaRose acknowledges this likely will not impact this November's election but says it could play a role in future ones.
The lawsuit comes as LaRose works to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls and have some prosecuted for election fraud.
In August, he referred potential evidence to the Ohio Attorney General's Office that 597 people who were not U.S. citizens were registered to vote in Ohio. LaRose says 138 of those appear to have voted in past elections.
Last week, Attorney General Dave Yost announced indictments of six people who are accused of voting in more than one election. All were permanent legal residents of the United States at the time of the elections in question but were not U.S. citizens.
LaRose says even though the number is small when you consider Ohio has more than 8 million registered voters, his office takes it seriously.
"Six hundred is a small number, but every year we have elections that come down to a single vote," LaRose said. "So it's our duty to make sure that we don't allow people that are not eligible to vote to vote. That's not something I'm going to apologize for. Again, it's our responsibility."
Ohio poll workers are also checking IDs for citizenship status this election.
The ACLU of Ohio, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and a law firm are challenging this in federal court. They want the court to enforce a 2006 injunction against making naturalized citizens show proof of citizenship during voter eligibility challenges at the polls. They call it discriminatory and say it can disenfranchise eligible voters.