Alarm over voter purges as 17m Americans removed from rolls in two years

[Sane Floridian]

Source: The Guardian

Tom McCarthy in New York
Thu 1 Aug 2019 17.23 EDT

US election jurisdictions with histories of egregious voter discrimination have been purging voter rolls at a rate 40% beyond the national average, according to a watchdog report released Thursday.

At least 17 million voters were purged nationwide between 2016 and 2018, according to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice. The number was basically unchanged from the previous two-year period.

While the rate of voter purges elsewhere has declined slowly, jurisdictions released from federal oversight by a watershed 2013 supreme court ruling had purge rates “significantly higher” than jurisdictions not previously subjected to oversight, the Brennan Center found in a previous report.

That trend has continued, the watchdog said, with the disproportionate purging of voters resulting in an estimated 1.1 million fewer voters between 2016 and 2018.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/01/voter-purges-us-elections-brennan-center-report

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I was thinking of becoming a star member anyway, but this story incensed me so much that I decided to do so now, having been told by Bill that star membership enables one a start threads before the 10-post mark.

[chowder66]

1. This is insane! nt

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

[Qutzupalotl]

3. Welcome to DU!

Your outrage is right on target. Thanks for this thread and link.

Everyone will have to check their registrations regularly at their SoS office, BoE, or sites like CanIVote.org. You’ll want to do it often as the deadline for registration nears — no telling when you might get purged. If you get purged after the deadline, raise hell. And tell your friends to do the same.

[dhill926]

4. we either fix this shit...

or we are fucked...

[Gregory Peccary]

5. Are people notified when they are purged?

[lagomorph777]

9. Hah! Are you kidding?

Purges don't work very well if you notify the victims.

[FakeNoose]

16. No they aren't notified - some are already registered, the rest need to re-register

What the states are doing is, they're comparing drivers license datafiles with the voter registration datafiles. Anytime they find a discrepancy, they assume the drivers license is the most recent/correct, so they delete the voter registration data. Anyone who got deleted needs to re-register, and it's easy enough to do.

This is happening to everyone, not just Democrats. If you've moved recently since the last election, maybe you didn't update your voter registration, but you probably updated your drivers license. They'll compare the files and delete your voter file. Maybe you registered to vote as "Bob" Jones, but your drivers license has you as "Robert" Jones. Guess which one they'll delete? Maybe you moved to a new county or state, and your old voter registration never got deleted. City dwellers are more likely to have moved since the last election, and they're also more likely to have voted Dem/liberal. But in reality it has nothing to do with which party (if any) you enrolled in.

So the good news is, if you were deleted it's very easy to fix. You can check your voter registration online, and you can re-register online if you need to. When you go to vote next time you might be asked to show a photo ID, like a drivers license or US passport. I usually bring my passport when I go to vote, but I haven't been asked to show ID for the last 24 years (since the last time I moved.)

To check and see if you're still registered to vote, click on this link:
(link) https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

It's safe and your privacy is assured. SCROLL DOWN to your state and enter your info.
They will tell you if you're registered, and if you need to re-register you can do that.

[JudyM]

6. Welcome to DU, Sane Floridian!

We must attack this full on in the swing and republican-controlled states, especially.
It’s bizarre to be seeing that 1/2 the country believes utter BS so we damned well need every Sane Floridian, Kentuckian, Texan, etc on the rolls.

[Sane Floridian]

8. A Sane TEXAN???

Just kidding! Thanks for the welcome!

[JudyM]

10. Lol

Be warned, you will see “Florida Man” ribbing threads here... all in good fun.

[Sane Floridian]

11. Iz okkay

I no longer live in Florida. I mean, come on, that place is nuts! Sane=Gone.

[JudyM]

12. .

[KY_EnviroGuy]

7. We can bet this is a coordinated Rethug effort by right-wing think tanks...

and well financed by the plutocrats. Brings them bragging rights in the golf course club house.

One way we can help keep this issue in check is to support organizations fighting voter suppression such as these:

Let America Vote: https://www.letamericavote.org/

We have a voting problem in America. Voting in our country has never been easy, but there’s a new challenge: Politicians are trying to stop Americans from voting because of who they are likely to vote for in an election.

Extreme voter suppression laws that disproportionately impact people based on their race or ethnicity, gender, age, or income have started popping up all over the country. If we don’t fight back, more and more Americans will become disenfranchised.

ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression

Voting rights are under attack nationwide as states pass voter suppression laws. These laws lead to significant burdens for eligible voters trying to exercise their most fundamental constitutional right. Since 2008, states across the country have passed measures to make it harder for Americans—particularly black people, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities—to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot. These measures include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls.

The ACLU is engaged in advocacy and litigation across the country to get rid of these harmful voter suppression measures once and for all.

League of Women Voters: https://www.lwv.org/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression

Voting rights are under attack. In recent years, politicians in dozens of states have erected intentional barriers to our right to vote, including forcing discriminatory voter ID and proof-of-citizenship restrictions on eligible voters, reducing polling place hours in communities of color, cutting early voting opportunities and illegally purging voters from the rolls.

Fair Fight: https://fairfight.com/

Like the poll taxes and literacy tests of the Jim Crow era, modern voter suppression efforts are relentless and effective.

Efforts to discourage and disenfranchise voters—in voter registration, ballot access, or counting of votes—have a catastrophic effect on our democracy and our communities. The facts and faces of voters from the 2018 election in Georgia convey the insidious design and pervasive impact of voter suppression.

Welcome to DU, Sane Floridian!........

[diva77]

17. Excellent post - to which I would like to add 2 more organizations

https://www.gregpalast.com/

Greg Palast exposed voter caging in Florida, and companies such as Crosscheck for their voter suppression tactics.

https://www.coalitionforgoodgovernance.org/

SNIP
During the election, then-SOS Kemp controlled Georgia’s entire voting system including every voting machine and tabulating computer. Kemp himself was running in a close race for governor, which he won.

The press has not described how easily any Georgia Secretary of State (or unknown colleagues) can rig the electronic machines without a trace. That danger is why Coalition for Good Governance is fighting for paper ballots for all Georgians. The Court determined that voting on the electronic machine system was unconstitutional, but that ordering a switch to paper ballots without more preparation time could also burden the right to vote.

Because of the disenfranchisement as described by Rachel Maddow and many Georgians, we are now asking the Court to require (1) electronic pollbook corrections and security now and (2) paper ballots for the December runoff and any other elections and the 2019 elections, while we await the 2019 hearing on the merits of the paper ballots case. SNIP

[Hortensis]

13. Oversetting elections is an important fascist technique for

gathering power until the day elections can no longer stop them.

Georgia's laws were written so that legal recourse was defeated before the governorship was blatantly stolen while the world watched. 1.4M voters purged total in GA. And of course the federal government did not step in.

We'd better assume RW operatives have been carefully studying these and other successful techniques here and other nations in preparation for applying them in many states.

[oasis]

14. This cannot be allowed to stand. Get this into the debates.

[Igel]

20. Not only can it be allowed, it must be allowed.

I moved in late 1999. I recently found that that until earlier this year the city hadn't purged its voter records since before I moved.

In other words, I could have hopped on a plane and voted in the 2018 elections, 19 years after moving to a different state. People who left the state before me could still vote.

In a sane city, those who are dead and who have moved are culled from the voting records periodically--not once per generation. This city--hardly a bastion of RW politics, by the way--was not sane. Their inaction resulted in inanity.

The number of registered voters was something like 110% of the voting age population. Not 110% of the *eligible* population--it has a very large number of immigrants, legal and illegal, who cannot legally vote--but 100% of those 18 and older.

If they didn't purge their voting records, in 15 years or so the number of registered voters would exceed the entire population, whether legally or illegally present, registered or not, over 18 or merely alive and aged 1 day to long past being declared incompetent.

[diva77]

15. Ari Berman article on this issue -- points out purges as far back as 2000 "election"

How the 2000 Election in Florida Led to a New Wave of Voter Disenfranchisement

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-the-2000-election-in-florida-led-to-a-new-wave-of-voter-disenfranchisement/

SNIP
No one could ever determine precisely how many voters who were incorrectly labeled felons were turned away from the polls. But the US Civil Rights Commission launched a major investigation into the 2000 election fiasco, and its acting general counsel, Edward Hailes, did the math the best that he could. If 12,000 voters were wrongly purged from the rolls, and 44 percent of them were African-American, and 90 percent of African-Americans voted for Gore, that meant 4,752 black Gore voters—almost nine times Bush’s margin of victory—could have been prevented from voting. It’s not a stretch to conclude that the purge cost Gore the election. “We did think it was outcome-determinative,” Hailes said.

The 2000 election in Florida forever changed American politics and kicked off a new wave of GOP-led voter disenfranchisement efforts. “Other people began to see that in very competitive elections, you could make a difference by keeping certain voters from participating,” Hailes said. Bush’s election empowered a new generation of voting-rights critics, who hyped the threat of voter fraud in order to restrict access to the ballot, and remade a Supreme Court that would eventually gut the centerpiece of the VRA.
SNIP
But blatant warning signs were ignored by Bush and the state well in advance of the election. On the orders of state officials, names were added to the purge list if there was only a 70 percent match between a name on the voter rolls and a name in the state’s felon database. This meant that voters could be tagged as felons even when middle initials, suffixes, nicknames, and even race and sex data didn’t match perfectly. Hence the confusion of Willie Steen with felon O’Steen.
SNIP

-------------------
Best to read entire article above to understand how purges were done.
-------------------
Greg Palast did the legwork in discovery of the massive voter "caging" (purges) that "won" the "election" for Dubya in 2000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Palast

SNIP After subsequently noticing a large proportion of African-American voters were claiming their names had disappeared from voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 election, Palast launched a full-scale investigation into voter fraud, the results of which were broadcast in the UK by the BBC on their Newsnight[6] show prior to the 2004 Election. Palast claimed to have obtained computer discs from Katherine Harris' office, which contained caging lists of "voters matched by race and tagged as felons."[5]SNIP

K&R for exposure

[mahina]

18. Welcome to DU. Help remind everyone to check their registration

And re register if we’ve been removed.
Also widely share election support contacts, aclu andnany others. We shall not be moved.

[Princetonian]

19. This is why every single one of us needs to register new voters every weekend we can.

I do it at least one day of the weekend at college campuses in a nearby battleground state.

You can too.

[olddad65]

21. Just another day in Amerussia.

[not_the_one]

22. Amerussia

I like that...

Welcome to DU.