OHIO — Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced Thursday that 499 non-citizen registrations from Ohio voter rolls. LaRose said it's part of a multi-phase, comprehensive audit of the state's voter registration database as the November election approaches. 

“I swore an oath to uphold the constitution of our state, and that document clearly states that only United States citizens can participate in Ohio elections,” said LaRose in a statement. “That means I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country aren’t voting. If or when they do become citizens, I’ll be the first one to congratulate them and welcome them to the franchise, but until then the law requires us to remove ineligible registrations to prevent illegal voting.”

LaRose said in May, there was a review of voter records using identification records from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. At that time, 136 voter registrations assigned to Ohio residents were found to have twice confirmed their non-citizenship status to the BMV. Eighty of them failed to respond to notices that asked them to confirm their citizenship status or cancel their registration. Local boards of elections are starting the removal of those registrations. 

The removals announced Thursday are those who confirmed their non-citizen status to the BMV and have been confirmed to be as such. Additionally, these individuals also failed to respond to notices from LaRose's office asking if they can confirm their citizenship status or cancel their registration. 

“I want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and say that most of them didn’t intend to break the law,” said LaRose. “We want to make sure a mistaken registration doesn’t become an illegal vote. We also want to make sure that lawfully registered citizens can participate seamlessly in the process, especially if their citizenship status changed recently.”

LaRose said investigations into the citizenship status of voters remains ongoing.