Three States Accused of Illegally Purging Voter Lists

Source: Alternet

Three States Accused of Illegally Purging Voter Lists

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted July 25, 2008.

The states are swapping data files to find duplicate names, but civil rights attorneys say they are not following federal law to remove them.

Election officials in a handful of states appear to be ignoring the federal law dictating the way registered voters may be purged from voter rolls, civil rights attorneys say. National voting rights groups have contacted officials in Kansas, Michigan and Louisiana in recent weeks because those states appear to be purging registered voters after election officials found duplicate names and birthdays of people on their voter lists and in out-of-state databases, such as driver's license records.

The states are assuming that a more recent driver's license or voter registration in another state indicates that the voter has relocated, meaning the voter registration tied to their prior address is no longer valid. While purging voters who move, die or are imprisoned is a routine part of managing elections, the federal law governing purges -- the National Voter Registration Act -- lays out a multiyear process of trying to contact voters to confirm a change of address before deleting them from voter rolls.

- snip -

"The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) limits the circumstances in which a state may cancel a voter's registration," the Fair Elections Legal Network, a Washington-based voting rights consortium, said in a June 24 letter to Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh. "The NVRA does not permit cancellation based on a match alone." "We are looking at several statewide purge issues," said Bradley Heard, a senior attorney with Advancement Project, a voting rights law firm. He said that in Michigan, both data matching and mailings by local officials to verify a voter's registration information were of concern. "We are also looking at a state law that calls for purging a bunch of voter registration records that are otherwise eligible."

Voting Rights Groups Target Purges

Last week, Project Vote, which is working in two dozen states to register voters in 2008, sent a letter to Dardenne saying his state appeared to be ignoring sections of the NVRA that require that voters be notified by mail over two federal election cycles before being removed. Project Vote's attorney said Louisiana Commissioner of Elections Angie LaPlace was treating apparently duplicate database listings as "cases of suspected fraud or some other irregularity."

Read more: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/92695/

---

This is how the criminal fucks hope to elect a majority in congress and continue four more years of Bush, with McCain.

I really hope we can fix this before November.

Last year, packaged with the infamous Primary election date change, Florida's state legislature passed a law that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of legitimate voters. The law requires the state to reject voter registrations if the state cannot match the information on registration applications to driver's license or Social Security records. NAACP filed a lawsuit: Florida NAACP v. Browning.

For much more: http://www.gregpalast.com/

if someone shows up to vote, and they're told they're not on the registration list, there's not much they can do at the time.

Provides link to states with online voter registration verification or contact.
Verify Your Voter Registration

this might deter the next round of repukes who attempt it

this should change your mind.

Fellow Republicans:

2007 has been a busy year for the Kansas Republican Party. We have taken the last 11 months to rebuild our party operations, make technology updates, build our fundraising database, and identify voters. We have also put operations in place to make the Party a more effective organization to support candidates, and better able to provide rapid campaign response in every county in the state.

<skip>

Our voter identification system is up and running giving us the capability to effectively mobilize voters and turn them out to vote on Election Day. To date,

the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/27/122448/64/478/426680