Voters, government must work together to protect voting rights

This can’t be conveyed often enough: There is no greater right or responsibility of being an American than to vote.

That means making sure you are properly registered to vote and that you actually exercise your right to vote on a regular basis.

People have died for this right and, “as we sit here” — to borrow a terrifying phrase from recent congressional testimony — enemies of the United States are working to take that right from us.

That said, no one should lose the right to vote due to a bureaucratic stumble.

So it was shocking to learn recently that elections officials in Franklin County and three rural Ohio counties — Henry, Huron and Mercer — improperly identified citizens who were in danger of seeing their voter registrations revoked by the state for not actively maintaining them.

Most troubling was the Franklin County misstep in which registration was wrongly canceled for 123 voters and last-chance warning notices were

errantly sent to another 1,128 voters. The problems were more procedural in the other counties.

The good news is the mistakes were caught and all wrongly canceled or notified voters have had their registrations restored.

We credit Secretary of State Frank Larose with stepping up efforts to scrutinize voter registration lists to make sure only those who have made no effort to maintain their registration after numerous notifications are removed under Ohio’s law for updating voter lists. While criticized by some as aimed at reducing Democratic voter participation, Ohio’s law was upheld last year by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Larose also is right to pursue legislation that would automatically update voter registrations when Ohioans interact with various state agencies, such as to renew motor vehicle registrations or driver’s licenses.

Meanwhile, just to make sure, look up your voter registration online at https:// bit.ly/2tbx6ht. The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7.