Filing the Form 257 requires county elections officials to inspect each voter listed over each issue raised, and if it can’t be resolved, holding a hearing within 10 days of receipt of the form. While some names have been removed due to statutory violations, such as registering to vote with a private mail box, many have been flagged as they go through a multi-year, multi-step federal process before removing a voter from the rolls could be considered.
A lot are names of people who have relocated to another state, and the complainant alleges those people potentially could be voting twice in any given election, election officials said.
If a voter has voted twice, election officials say the matter would have been referred to the county prosecutor.
Since February, in nearly 90 forms that have been filed with Butler County, more than 3,000 names have been requested to be reviewed. To date, no election fraud had been found as a result of the forms filed thus far, officials said. Before the first form filed in February, the last Form 257 the Butler County elections office received was in November 2015.
In neighboring Warren County, they have received similar requests, but nothing documented on an official form.
Warren County’s elections director Brian Sleeth described what’s happening in Butler County as the office “getting absolutely bombarded,” especially since what he has received is the occasional email. Warren County’s staff ticks off the names as the issues are addressed or resolved.
“I don’t get official forms like Butler County’s getting where they have to have hearings,” said Sleeth. “I get a list of people, and I don’t get it that often, maybe once every month or two, a list of voters we found issues with. I’ll go through them and look at them, and give them a response.”
Warren County, the 10th largest county by population in Ohio, has more than 170,000 registered voters. Butler County, which is the seventh-largest county, has more than 255,000. Hamilton County, the third-largest county in Ohio, with more than 600,000 registered voters.
Sherry Poland, director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections, said they’ve received 428 Form 257s this year. In 2023, they didn’t receive any, and just one in 2022 and six in 2021.
The extra 400-plus forms filed did create “a great deal of additional work,” she said, with processing and holding hearings on what she called a “large number of voter challenges.”
Many of the requests are to remove or address potential duplicates on the county’s rolls, or remove voters who have allegedly moved to another state. When there is not Personal Identifying Information (PII) associate with the form, Butler County elections officials said they can only go on the information they have within at the office. Butler County elections officials said without confirmation from the voter or information like a driver’s license number or Social Security Number, county officials must act according to federal procedures.
“If (Deputy Director) Eric (Corbin) and I cannot determine, solely with the records that we hold here at the Board of Elections, we have to hold a quasi-judicial hearing,” Butler County elections Director Nicole Unzicker said.
Even without the Form 257 filed, Unzicker and Corbin said every day they work to update the voter rolls to make sure those who haven’t voted in years have been duly notified before removal.
“When you are talking about removing somebody’s ability to cast a ballot, that is why we follow the guidelines outlined in the NVRA (National Voter Registration Act) because we are unable to simply remove someone for registering in another state,” said Unzicker. “Simply because someone has changed their address at the post office, which is outlined in the NCOA (National Change of Address) process of the NVRA Act, we are unable to remove that person solely for that reason. That tends to be the majority of the 257′s that have been filed.”
This procedure was confirmed by the Ohio Secretary of State, which had been following this process since 2021.
“If a registered voter has not had any voter activity over a period of two years, they will be put into ‘confirmation status’ and the board will send notices to verify the voter’s status,” said Dan Lusheck, Ohio Secretary of State deputy communications director. “This starts the four-year clock where they will be removed from the voter rolls for inactivity if they do not respond or partake in any voter activity.”
He said this process “ensures that the data remains up to date and accurate.”
“These removals can include deceased voters, voters who moved out of state, or in some cases registrations where the individuals are not legally allowed to be registered, such as verified noncitizens,” he said.
Additionally, if a person does move out of the state, if a person updates their United States Postal Service address, that would also flag the National Change of Address process. Butler County elections officials review the voter rolls every day, and they have removed voters from its rolls, including one earlier this summer. Voters can voluntarily cancel their voter registration if they plan to move out of state by filling out a Voter Registration Cancellation form found at www.ohiosos.gov.
In May, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose launched what his office called “a rigorous statewide election integrity initiative” with the goal of having accurate voter registration databases.
“This work is not only critical to keeping our elections honest, but it’s also essential to making sure our election officials can properly plan for the right number of ballots, voting machines, polling places and poll workers,” LaRose said in May. “That starts with keeping accurate voter records.”
The Journal-News reached out to Ohio Votes Count via its website contact portal and a listed email, but have not received a response.
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