What You Need To Know About Voter Roll Maintenance
Since the 2020 election, U.S. states have stripped millions of voters deemed ineligible from voter rolls and will almost certainly remove more.
North Carolina recently said it removed more than 747,000 ineligible registration records from the state’s voter rolls over the past year. Oklahoma removed over 453,000 ineligible voters since Jan. 1, 2021. In August, Texas announced the removal of over one million people from its rolls since 2021.
Usually, this isn’t cause for alarm. As North Carolina’s voter roll maintenance raised concerns that eligible voters were being purged, state election officials stressed that only inactive records were removed. They also noted North Carolina has nearly 7.7 million registered voters. The state has around 8 million voting-age residents, according to the latest available data.
“Ideally we all want the most complete and accurate voter registration database possible,” said Quinn Raymond of Protect Democracy, a co-founder of Vote Shield. “That is, of course, impossible, because on any given day, in any given state, there is someone moving, dying, [etc]. So there are these things that are changing in people’s lives, and keeping track of that is exceptionally challenging.”
Part of that process, Raymond said, is removing records that are no longer eligible. “Not just for the sake of election integrity, but so that election administrators can focus their spare resources on actual voters.”
North Carolina’s announcement coincided with a lawsuit against the State Election Board over the state’s voter rolls. The complaint from the Republican National Committee (RNC) alleges the board allowed over 225,000 people to register to vote with forms that lacked certain required identification information.
The complaint is one example of how voter roll maintenance has spurred litigation ahead of November. Currently, there are over two dozen active lawsuits flagging alleged errors, inaccuracies, or deficiencies on voter rolls, or challenging policies pertaining to voter roll maintenance, according to Democracy Docket’s database.
Largely driven by conservative organizations and individuals, the cases range from complaints alleging rolls aren’t being kept properly to lawsuits claiming county boards aren’t lawfully responding to challenges against a voter’s eligibility.
Democracy Docket’s data also shows how the nature of the cases has gradually changed over the past year. In late 2023 and earlier this year, most cases centered around activists and organizations seeking access to voter records to examine rolls, but over time shifted toward highlighting alleged flaws on voter lists or issues with a state’s process for challenging a voter’s eligibility.
At the center of these cases are state and federally-prescribed mandates for jurisdictions to maintain accurate lists of eligible voters. The federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states to implement a list maintenance program.
Allowing public access to state data can be beneficial when it allows people to understand how their states are complying with obligations under the NVRA, said Davin Rosborough, a deputy director with the ACLU Voting Rights Project.
That access becomes problematic when groups try to then use that data improperly to “engage in mass voter challenges,” Rosebrough said. “And we are continuing to intervene in cases where some of these groups are seeking to try to get states to purge voters from the rolls improperly.”
Voter roll maintenance is, generally, a legal and necessary practice.
In North Carolina, state law requires the state and county election boards to maintain accurate lists by both removing the names of ineligible voters and updating the addresses and other necessary data of eligible voters.
The categories of people who could be removed from lists include people who moved to a different county within the state, which accounted for the bulk of the 747,000 North Carolinians, or moved out of state.
When states announce the removal of inactive voters, Rosborough said he considers the timing of the announcement. The NVRA mandates that states must complete their voter roll maintenance program (which entails systemic removals of voters) no later than 90 days before an election, though there are certain exceptions such as if a person has died or requested their removal.
In Pennsylvania, election officials are required by law “to ensure the maintenance of accurate and current registration records.” A review of the state’s voter roll maintenance by Protect Democracy and Vote Shield found that between the last presidential election on November 3, 2020 and May 1 of this year, counties removed nearly 2 million inactive voters.
While that’s a staggering amount, the figure is less striking considering the state has around 10 million voting-age residents and the removals occurred at least once every calendar year. Comparably, Texas removed around one million people over roughly three years, but has a voting-age population of over 20 million people.
Last year in Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) said nearly 100,000 registrations were slated for cancellation because the voters no longer live at the address they used when they registered. Benson explained that, before the 2020 election, the inactive voters were sent notice that their registration would be canceled if they didn’t respond to the notice or engage in any voter activity in the subsequent two federal election cycles.
Under federal law, a voter can’t be removed for not participating in an election unless they haven’t voted for two or more consecutive federal elections. A state can start the process of examining a voter’s eligibility based on data showing the voter hasn’t voted or communicated with a registrar over an extended period.
When voter roll maintenance goes wrong
Benson’s voter cancellations haven’t stopped the lawsuits from coming, especially with how politically-charged the practice has become. At least three cases are pending in Michigan alleging there are significant errors in the state’s voter lists, including a case from the RNC that claims at least 53 counties across Michigan have more active registered voters than adults over age 18.
But lawsuits are inevitable. Voter rolls lists are living documents in that they are constantly being updated. And just as there are lawsuits seeking to remove individuals from voter rolls, there is also litigation seeking to block the potential disenfranchisement of eligible voters. Some states have run into legal trouble over their voter purge practices.
The Justice Department recently sued Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) over the state’s voter purge program that targeted noncitizen voters. The department accuses Alabama of violating the NVRA’s 90-day “quiet period,” which prohibits removing registered voters from rolls within 90 days of an election. The agency alleges the state moved to purge voters 84 days before the general election.
When assessing voter roll programs like Alabama’s, Rosborough considers two questions: “Who are they targeting and what is the source of the data they’re claiming to use?”
He mentioned Tennessee, where state election officials came under fire for letters sent to around 14,000 residents seeking proof of citizenship. The ACLU of Tennessee, along with other civil rights groups, had threatened to sue Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett (R) over the letters.
In North Carolina, the RNC’s lawsuit seeks to remove over 200,000 voters whom the plaintiffs essentially claim are noncitizens. One of the affected voters joined a motion from the North Carolina NAACP to intervene in the federal case.
“For decades I’ve been able to vote for candidates of my choice in North Carolina,” the voter, Jackson Sailor Jones, who also works for Common Cause North Carolina, said in September. “But now I am one of hundreds of thousands of eligible North Carolina voters who extremists want to deny their freedom to cast a ballot just days before voting begins in our state.”
The NAACP called the request to remove the voters “unprecedented and improper.” Their motion to intervene was denied.