Ohio Voter Rolls Smaller After Statewide Purge

With literally hundreds of requests coming in each week for new voter registrations, or for absentee ballots, election workers around the state are making sure the names they have are legitimate.

As employees at the Mahoning County Board of Elections are busy this time of year entering information on new voter registrations, the state is working to purge names and addresses that are out-of-date, no longer valid and in many cases, duplicated in multiple counties.

"If someone voted in another county and we did not know that they registered in another county, we would still have them in our files. The state is actually working to reduce that, so now we're working with inter-county and we're trying to, they'll send us their duplicates, we'll send 'em our duplicates and the state keeps a record of that," said Joyce Pesta, director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections.

One reason why the voter rolls are so large is that workers are required to hold onto a person's registration for at least two federal election cycles, or eight years.

The recent purge has pulled more than 10,0000 off the rolls in Mahoning County and another 4,000 in Columbiana, but Trumbull County actually added 1,500 names.

http://www.wkbn.com/content/news/local/story/Ohio-Voter-Rolls-Smaller-After-Statewide-Purge/vYIH4xG_Tkei57TCPetxJg.cspx