On Thursday, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office referred 138 illegal aliens for prosecution after they were discovered to have been registered to vote.
According to Fox News, the announcement of prosecutions is the culmination of a months-long auditing of the crucial swing state’s voter rolls by Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R-Ohio). Hundreds of other illegal aliens were already purged from the voter rolls earlier this year as the state takes steps towards securing election integrity ahead of the November election.
“I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country do not vote in our elections,” said LaRose in a statement. “We’ve so far identified 597 individuals who’ve registered to vote in Ohio despite not being citizens of the United States, as our state constitution requires.”
Of those 597, LaRose said, 148 cases occurred in 2022, while 117 happened in 2021 and 354 occurred in 2019.
“The evidence includes 138 individuals who appear to have cast a ballot in an Ohio election during the time state and federal records show they lacked citizenship status,” LaRose continued. “The law requires me to refer these individuals to the attorney general, and that’s what we’re doing today.”
LaRose’s audit has primarily utilized cross-referencing records from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, as well as federal jury pool data.
Thus far, over 155,000 voter registrations that were found to be abandoned or inactive have been purged from the voter rolls under LaRose’s audit.
Ohio, which is worth 17 electoral votes, is widely seen as one of the most important swing states in the country. After twice voting for Barack Obama, Ohio voted for President Donald Trump by an 8-point margin in 2016, the highest margin of victory for any candidate in the Buckeye State since George H.W. Bush in 1988, despite polls predicting a close race. President Trump then won the state again by roughly the same margin against Joe Biden in 2020, defying the polls once more. The state is now considered to be reliably in favor of Trump for a third consecutive time against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
LaRosa is to be commended for his efforts. Now when can we expect to see officials of the state charged if they knowingly abetted registration of illegals to vote?
“I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country do not vote in our elections,” said LaRose in a statement.
A step in the right direction, but I find La Rose’s wording troubling. If these are illegal aliens, they can never, ever “earn citizenship”. They have committed felonies by coming and remaining here, along with their employers and landlords. Merely referring them to a judge who will muck things up isn’t the answer. This must be a strict liability crime. Illegal presence in the U.S. demands immediate deportation. That’s what citizens should expect from every government. Is it too much to demand that public officials immediately deport anyone found here illegally? Now, we have to wait for them to register and vote?
One reason we are staring over the precipice is the abject failure by every administration to aggressively deport every, single illegal alien and prosecute/defund every and all groups which facilitate their presence here.