COLUMBUS- State Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) today sent a letter to Governor
Kasich and Secretary of State Jon Husted seeking answers about the second major
failure in six months to update tens of thousands of Ohioans' voter
registrations. BMV customers who update their address online have a right
to have that update serve as voter registration. Since the BMV began sharing
this data with the Secretary of State, the transmissions have come in months
later than the law requires potentially causing major problems for voters and
poll workers. The letter is below:
April 30, 2013
The Honorable John Kasich
Governor
The Honorable Jon Husted
Secretary of State
Dear Governor Kasich &
Secretary Husted,
I just learned on Friday that
the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) and the Ohio Secretary of State’s
office have again failed to transmit months of voter registration updates to
the 88 Boards of Elections in a timely manner. This mistake could once
again adversely impact thousands of Ohio
voters and potentially mean that votes cast in good faith by Ohio citizens will not be counted.
This is a repeat of the major
mistake made during the November 2012 election cycle when nearly 100,000 Ohio voters’
registration updates made through the BMV were sent to local Boards of Election
just days before a major presidential election. I do not understand how
your offices could make this same mistake twice. We can and we must do
better.
The federal “Motor Voter” law
requires the BMV to send voter registration data to election officials within 5
to 10 days of acceptance. See 42 USC § 1973GG–3(e). Ohio law requires registrations to be
transmitted from the BMV to election officials within 5 days. See ORC
3503.11. It is inexcusable that Ohio
continues to be out of compliance with these laws, especially when Ohioans’
rights to vote are at stake.
The failure of the BMV and the
Secretary of State’s office to transmit the voter registration updates in a
timely manner adversely impacts voters in a variety of ways. Some voters
who have requested absentee ballots at their new address will have had those
requests denied because their registration updates were not transmitted in
time. Even worse, other voters’ absentee ballots could be rejected
because they have sent them in before these updates have gone through.
Still other voters will not know their correct polling place because they were
not notified of the new location in a timely manner. These voters may be
forced to cast provisional ballots that have a strong chance of being
rejected.
At the same time, Board of
Elections workers will have to work overtime to update these registrations and
counties will have to pay to reprint thousands of precinct poll books because
of this mistake. Had these registrations been sent to the counties just a
few weeks earlier, the reprinting of poll books could have been avoided.
As it is, voters and local governments will have to bear the cost of this huge
error.
I have repeatedly sought
records from the Secretary of State on the last major failure to timely update
tens of thousands of Ohioans’ voter registrations and have thus far not
received the requested records. I renew my request for the data file that
was transmitted from the BMV to the Secretary of State’s office in October of
2012 and I make a new request for the data file that was transmitted from the
BMV to the Secretary of State’s office in recent weeks. As with the
original request, I ask for the files to be in table format such as Excel,
comma-delimited text, or other similar format.
Investigation of these records
is absolutely critical to understanding this situation and to preventing it
from ever happening again. I look forward to your prompt response.
Respectfully,
