Ohio has secured long-term federal access to the SAVE database so state election officials can clean voter rolls and verify citizenship more effectively, ending a period when that data was limited and costly to obtain. Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced a multi-decade agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that restores bulk and verifiable records access, follows a lawsuit over denied access, and backs a push to remove wrongful registrations and protect election integrity.
The agreement guarantees Ohio enhanced federal records for at least 20 years, giving the state a reliable path to confirm voter eligibility using the SAVE system. That database had previously been difficult and expensive for states to use, which hampered efforts to spot noncitizen registrations and other problems in voter rolls. With long-term access, Ohio can run broader checks and reduce the friction for legitimate enforcement work.
LaRose described the deal as a practical tool to protect elections and said it restores capabilities Ohio needs to verify citizenship and run bulk 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.”
The agreement wraps up litigation LaRose filed against DHS under the prior administration after access was limited and states were billed per query. That approach discouraged wide-scale checks and left officials with tough choices between spending scarce resources and leaving potential problems in place. This pause in access created an opening for mistakes and misuse to persist on voter rolls.
LaRose’s office has already used other tools to clear the rolls, removing tens of thousands of registrations it flagged as improper well before the most recent election cycle. In October the office referred over 1,000 noncitizens to the DOJ for potential prosecution after determining that they “appear to have registered to vote unlawfully in Ohio.” Those referrals reflect a hands-on approach to cleaning up registrations and pursuing possible criminal behavior.
Further detail from the Secretary of State’s review shows 1,084 cases were identified, and of those, 167 individuals appeared to have cast a ballot in a federal election since 2018. The findings included many troubling patterns: 99 people seemed to have voted in two different states during the same federal election, 16 appeared to have voted twice in Ohio in the same federal contest, and 14 ballots were tied to voters after the recorded date of death. Investigators also flagged four suspected ballot-harvesting incidents and two registrations at unlawful residences.
The office also removed more than 155,000 registrations confirmed as abandoned and inactive for at least four consecutive years, targeting rolls bloat that can obscure the real electorate. Those purges help sharpen accuracy and reduce opportunities for fraud or administrative error, while making election administration smoother and more transparent. The combination of long-term SAVE access and these cleanup actions aims to tighten verification and reporting going forward.
Alongside the enforcement moves, the state emphasizes that accurate rolls protect honest voters by ensuring the system reflects real, eligible participants. The new data-sharing setup should streamline bulk verification processes and lower the recurring costs that had limited checks in the past. Officials say the goal is simple: stronger, cleaner rolls and elections Ohioans can trust.
