2023 SB71 The DATA Act:
Status:  Ohio citizens presented a number of proposed improvements to SB71 The DATA Act (see Blog and Additional Details              below) to the Secretary of State's office, House Representatives and Senators that would have made Ohio elections                                 more secure and accurate.  SB71 was included in Senate Budget 6/9/2023 without any citizen proposed                                                      improvements. SB71 without any citizen proposed improvements was inserted into HB33 Budget Bill and signed by                                  Governor DeWine 7/4/2023.
One positive item in the bill included a correction to a previously flawed Registration Date data field in which there is, in                          many cases, no way to know the original voter registration date of an individual, since                                                                                    this data field is updated whenever a voter record is updated, and perhaps every time a registered voter updates their                            driver's license or state id. This causes a large number of voter records with Registration Dates beyond the deadline to                            register and vote to be intermingled with actual voter registrations that are added to the voter rolls after the deadline                              to register and vote in an election.
Although passed into law on 7/4/2023, HB33 states the implementation date for The DATA Act to be by January 1, 2025 around 18        months after the bill was signed, and conveniently AFTER the November 2024 presidential election, potentially allowing yet                    another presidential election to have flawed Registration Dates on voter rolls in which eligible voter registrations will be comingled        with ineligible voter registrations with a Registration date beyond the deadline to register and vote in the November 2024                      election.                            
Summary:  $5 million taxpayer funded bill that claims to bolster uniformity and transparency in Ohio elections, but in reality does          very little to improve the integrity of Ohio's elections. Citizens proposed improvements to this bill to verify citizenship, identity 
and Ohio residency, clean-up hundreds of thousands of voter registrations records and  investigate hundreds of additional voter            registrations, and to include an online repository of many public election records, including cast vote records; however, not one              proposed citizen improvement is included.  
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