Politicians and so-called grassroots groups are challenging voter rolls across the country with the purported purpose of finding voter fraud. Instead, they are often targeting legitimate (and now confused or angry) voters. This week, an Ohio citizen unsuccessfully challenged several hundred voters, mainly students, raising the question why the focus would be on eliminating voters when “not enough people participate” in elections in the first place.
On Monday, the Franklin County Board of Elections in Ohio rejected a request to remove 308 people from the county’s voter registration list.
A woman working with the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, the state arm of the Tea Party-affiliated True the Vote group, submitted the challenges, according to the Columbus Dispatch. Most of the challenged voters were Ohio State University students who she said should be removed from the rolls “because they did not provide address details such as apartment or dorm room numbers.”
The county Board rejected this challenge because “state law does not require that level of detail” and outdated information was used to challenge voters. Student Emma Gibson, who defended her registration status, said that she had updated her address two weeks ago.
“This election is something I hold very dear to me,” Gibson said. “It was a little terrifying to think I might not be able to participate.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, hundreds more college students in Ohio were targeted by recent voter challenges: 110 at Oberlin College, 88 at College of Wooster, 38 at Kent State—and dozens more from the University of Cincinnati, Miami University, Lake Erie College, Walsh University, Hiram College, John Carroll University and Telshe Yeshiva, a rabbinical college near Cleveland. So far, every county election board that has reviewed the dorm challenges found them invalid.
Although it is important to strive for clean voter rolls to maintain fair elections, it’s another, potentially dangerous issue when elections offices are bogged down with bogus challenges and legitimate voters are being called to question.