State election officials showed up on Capitol Hill last week to talk about preparations for November’s vote, and suddenly a “top this” competition broke out.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said he had removed the names of 600 noncitizens from his state’s rolls over the last year. West Virginia Secretary of State Andrew “Mac” Warner, a Republican, said he’d erased 400,000 names — people who had moved, died or were otherwise ineligible.

Florida’s elections chief — Republican Secretary of State Cord Byrd — said his state has pulled 1 million names off its active-voter list since 2022.

Not to be outdone, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, pointed out that she had removed 800,000 names from her state rolls over the last five years, despite being significantly less populous than Florida.

A Democrat bragging about taking names off of voter lists would have been almost unthinkable just five years ago, but there’s been a sea change in thinking since the 2020 election put a sharp new focus on the issue, says Lauren Bowman of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

In the past, secretaries of state focused heavily on ballot access thanks to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. But that law, better known as Motor Voter, also included directions to state election officials to clean up their rolls.

After the pandemic-infused 2020 election saw states rush to adopt mailed ballots, the issue of dirty voter rolls gained attention. If states mail out ballot request forms, or in some cases even live ballots, it’s important to know they’re going to legitimate voters.

“That’s been one of the good things that came out of the 2020 election,” Ms. Bowman said. “There’s a lot more pressure on these secretaries of state to essential list maintenance.”

State officials’ bragging about name removal came at a hearing before the House Administration Committee, where usual differences between the parties emerged over the tension between ballot access and election integrity.

Nowhere was that more apparent than in noncitizen voting, which the Democratic officials said it wasn’t worthy of concern.

“Noncitizen voting does not happen in any systemic way in New Mexico or in the nation more broadly,” said Maggie Toulouse Oliver, secretary of state in New Mexico. “However, voters believe noncitizen voting does occur and this impacts their overall confidence in elections.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes called noncitizen voting “vanishingly rare” and a “fake problem.” He complained that voters in his state in 2004 adopted a proposal that required proof of citizenship before someone could register to vote using a state form. Federal law only requires a signature attestation for registering using a federal form.

Mr. Fontes said that when he served as county recorder in Maricopa County, officials determined the citizenship proof requirement blocked 47,000 American citizens from registering to vote.

“Voter suppression is unfortunately alive and well,” he said.

But GOP-run states say they have found noncitizens on their rolls when they go to look.

Virginia says it culled its lists of 6,300 likely noncitizens. Alabama said it erased 3,200 names. And Texas said it deleted 6,500 names, of whom 1,830 had cast ballots in the past.

Ohio’s Mr. LaRose told the committee that he found 600 noncitizens on his state’s rolls over the last year, including 135 who had cast ballots in elections.

“This idea that it’s already illegal — it’s illegal to hijack airplanes, but we don’t get rid of the TSA [Transportation Security Administration],” he said.

Mr. LaRose said finding the names wasn’t easy. State officials had to strike a deal with the Department of Homeland Security and pay money — a dollar a name — to run a list of names against one of the federal agency’s databases.

He said it could be headed off if states were able to check citizenship on the front end.

That would take a change in federal law, which leaves states, for now, in the mode of having to chase down noncitizens after the fact.

The Republican National Committee last month challenged Minnesota, where a noncitizen was reportedly mailed a primary ballot earlier this year thanks to the state’s automatic voter registration system.

Minnesota reviewed more than 103,000 names and said it suspended 1% of them — about 1,000 names — from its active voter rolls because of questions about their validity.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, and Republicans said the dirty voter rolls are a black eye on his administration of the state.

“Without the efforts of the RNC and MNGOP, Walz would have quietly allowed noncitizens to remain on the voter rolls and cast ballots this election,” said RNC Chairman Michael Whatley.

Minnesota’s public safety commissioner, though, said it wasn’t just citizenship. Names were also pulled because they had problems with addresses or names.

“Minnesota has a proud tradition of broad voter participation and unquestionably fair and secure elections,” Commissioner Bob Jacobson said in a letter to the RNC.

Michigan’s Ms. Benson downplayed noncitizen voting at last week’s hearing, even as she bragged about removing names for other reasons, such as dead people and those who moved.

“There’s no evidence that non-citizens are voting. If they were, it would be easy to prove since voting records are public and despite numerous organizations spending a lot of money to try to convince people that non-citizens are voting, none of these groups have actually been able to provide any evidence of it,” she said.

Ms. Bowman of PILF said Ms. Benson’s words about cleaning her voter rolls rang hollow.

“Since before the 2020 election, we have been trying to get Secretary Benson to remove nearly 26,000 deceased registrants. Many of these registrants have been dead for over two decades. We’ve even provided her with many of their obituaries and pictures of their graves,” Ms. Bowman said.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.