Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced Tuesday that a grand jury indicted six noncitizens who allegedly voted in elections in his state over the past decade.
All six noncitizens were living in the country legally, and some or all of them allegedly cast ballots in multiple recent elections, including the 2016 and 2020 elections, according to a press release. Three of the defendants were from Franklin County, a blue county that is home to the populous city of Columbus.
The indictments stemmed from Secretary of State Frank LaRose referring nearly 600 voting-related cases to the Attorney General’s Office in August, Yost said at a press conference.
Yost said he has jurisdiction to investigate and possibly prosecute 138 of the cases because those are related to people allegedly voting, while the rest are related to registering to vote, which his office does not have jurisdiction over to prosecute.
“This law is being enforced, and I think this should enable everybody to take a deep breath and be more confident that our elections are, in fact, safe and secure and that noncitizens are not going to vote,” Yost said. “And if that would happen, the few that slip through the cracks will be held accountable.”
In Ohio, a red-leaning state with 8 million registered voters, LaRose’s office regularly scrubs his state’s voter registration list and uses a Department of Homeland Security database to check the citizenship status of registered voters, LaRose told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview.
LaRose and Yost have faced questions about why they have waited to announce and prosecute improper voting cases from past years so close to the 2024 elections. LaRose has said the nearly 600 cases his office uncovered were the result of a “comprehensive audit” that he began earlier this year.
Yost said he began investigating the cases after he received the referrals and after local county prosecutors were given a chance to prosecute the cases but declined to do so.
Noncitizen voting is illegal in every state, with the exception of a few local jurisdictions, and it is punishable by fines, jail, or deportation. Some argue that because instances of prosecutions for it are so rare, it is not happening at an impactful level. However, polling shows Republicans have widespread concerns that it is still occurring and going unchecked.
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A snapshot of data from the conservative Heritage Foundation showed a couple dozen prosecutions in the United States in the last two decades. A study by the left-leaning Brennan Center found 30 instances of alleged noncitizen voting that were referred for prosecution in 2016.
“There’s very small numbers of noncitizens who have voted,” Yost said, adding that LaRose’s office “detected those folks.”