What's the Deal with Erasing People from the Voter Rolls?
What's the Deal with Erasing People from the Voter Rolls?
Do dead people vote? Of course they don't.
When it comes to attacks on voting and elections, we’ll see a few themes come up again and again this year: arguments against mail-in ballots, attempts to ban voting machines, and—as we’ve seen twice in one week—attempts to erase names from voter registration rolls.
Republicans have now sued Michigan and Nevada to make those states review their voter rolls and erase people who have moved from the area, have passed away, or are otherwise no longer eligible to vote.
No one disagrees we should remove ineligible people from voter rolls, but mass “purges” in the lead-up to an election are the exact wrong way to do it.
First, purges notoriously result in eligible voters being kicked off the rolls due to faulty data—especially when data are compiled using new, untested AI tools to comb the rolls for ineligible voters.
An example: Two different voters are registered in Michigan, Jim Smith and James Smith. Someone using an AI tool says Jim Smith has died and should be purged. Election officials—overworked in an election year and with only the scant AI evidence to rely on—mistakenly assume “Jim” is short for “James” and erase James Smith from the rolls. On Election Day, James Smith— alive and well—gets to his polling place to learn he’s been purged and can’t vote.1
Examples like this happen all the time with mass purges.
Second, the law already requires states to clean up their voter rolls using a deliberate, multi-step process designed to ensure they only remove ineligible voters, which means additional purges are excessive and unnecessary.2
Third, the entire justification for purges is based on the hoax of mass voter fraud, which doesn’t actually occur.
To review: Everyone agrees only eligible people should vote, and there’s zero history or evidence that an epidemic of ineligible voters is stealing our elections.
Which means we have a choice when it comes to maintaining clean voter rolls:
We can keep the rolls clean over time by engaging in a meaningful, methodical, legal process that ensures we only remove ineligible voters; or
We can run to court to force through mass purges on the back of trumped-up voter fraud claims without regard for the collateral damage of disenfranchising untold numbers of eligible voters.
Don’t let anyone tell you the choice in our elections isn’t real.
Maybe even consider sharing this post with someone you know who believes otherwise.
Michigan voters can re-register on Election Day, but only at the elections office and with extra documentation. That means James can only vote if he has time to drive home to get his documents, then to the elections office to register, then back to his polling place to vote.