“We’ve had a disproportionate number of these issues happening at the BMV,” said Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell, who’s been prosecutor since 2011 and is a former a member of the Warren County Board of Elections.
BMV Registrar Charlie Norman denies there is a noncitizen voter registration problem at the BMV. With 13 million over-the-counter transactions a year, he said he’s sure there are mistakes like misspellings on voter registration applications, but he said noncitizens do not even get the chance to register at the BMV because they don’t have the required proof of citizenship to get their driver’s license or state ID.
“Its impossible for that to be a part of our driver license process,” Norman said. “I’m telling you it’s not happening.”
The National Voter Registration Act, enacted by Congress in 1993, requires the BMV and many public assistance agencies to offer voter registration along with other services.
Norman said people who apply for a driver’s license or state ID must be Ohio residents and provide their full legal name, date of birth, and social security number and provide documents such as a passport, birth certificate or naturalization paperwork.
A noncitizen applying for a driver’s license or state ID must show original federal immigration documents that the BMV checks electronically against a federal immigration database. State law requires that their license say they are a “noncitizen,” Norman said.
The BMV’s computer system will not allow people to register to vote without documents proving they are a citizen, he said.
Once a person is registered the BMV prints out a form they must sign, Norman said. And each night the BMV sends an electronic update to the Ohio Secretary of State for all voter registrations or updates.
Brian Sleeth, director of the Warren County Board of Elections, recently reviewed 300 forms returned by people who’d been alerted by LaRose’s office that records showed they were potentially noncitizens registered to voter. Most turned out to be naturalized citizens and those who were not were removed from the voter registration rolls.
“I talked to a few of these noncitizen voters that got registered and they said the BMV told them that the boards would figure out if they should be registered or not. But Charlie Norman said that if the person at the BMV is not a citizen then a voter registration card will not print,” Sleeth said. “Those recent noncitizen voter notices that we received, there were a few of these voters that registered at the BMV so I am not sure where the disconnect is.”
Fornshell also had a case where the noncitizen was allowed to register by someone at the BMV who said the board of elections would decide if she was allowed to vote.
Montgomery County Board of Elections Director Jeff Rezabek said his office had a case where a person had applied for citizenship and it was discovered the person had been mistakenly registered to vote even though they had correctly marked their form at the BMV and said they did not want to register to vote.
Alisha Beeler, director of the Greene County board had a similar issue with a person who told the BMV they were not a citizen but the application to register was submitted and a board staff member mistakenly processed the registration without noticing that the person had checked the box for being a noncitizen.
Beeler and Rezabek said the people they referenced never attempted to vote and were removed from the rolls.
Attorney Kathleen Kersh, who has worked with immigrant communities for 11 years, said she has never met a noncitizen who knowingly registered to vote.
“The only way I have ever seen a noncitizen registered to vote has been when the BMV automatically registers people when they get a license. I do not know exactly how that happens on the BMV’s end, but I have seen it happen a couple of times in my career,” said Kersh, senior attorney and project director at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality in Dayton.
“Many times people are registered by the BMV without their knowledge or consent, and they never vote because they know they are not allowed to vote. Of course, the BMV is an agency of the state of Ohio, and so state leaders, including the Attorney General and Secretary of State, could address those automatic registrations if they felt this were a real threat.”
Coming Monday: We look at the possible impact on voters and local boards of election of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s proposed election law changes.
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