In northwest Ohio’s Wood County, nearly 17,000 people had their voter registration challenged days before early voting began.
That’s about 20% of the county’s voting population. The list included a sitting county commissioner and board of elections member. And the challenges came from just one person.
While an extreme example, Wood is among counties across Ohio that saw an uptick in voter challenges ahead of the Nov. 5 election. State law allows individuals to contest another person’s right to vote, which is designed to catch ineligible voters who may get overlooked during typical voter roll maintenance.
But election officials say something different happened this year: Conservative groups that questioned the 2020 presidential election results empowered people to use data from third-party websites to dispute hundreds or even thousands of names on the voter rolls.
Sometimes the challenges resulted in action, such as the removal of deceased people. But most were rejected for not adhering to federal law and sucked up election officials’ time and resources in the process.