Wisconsin to remove up to 188,000 from voter rolls because they have not voted in 4 years

[Borderer]

67. Please forgive my ignorance, but I have a question

As a Brit I am wondering how the voters rolls are normally updated in the US. I appreciate this probably differs between states, but am I right in thinking that the onus to register is entirely on the voter (augmented by some automatic forms of registration such as the Motor-Voter processes)?

Here in the UK every local authority has a statutory duty to compile and maintain accurate electoral registers. Every household is sent a letter every year detailing who is on the register at that address, including young people who will soon be old enough to vote, and you are required to either confirm/update it using the freepost envelope or to do it online. If you don't do that, you get at least one reminder letter. Of course some people still fail to respond and at some point this results in them being struck off the register (not sure if it is right away or if it only happens after successive non-returns), but there is always an advertising campaign in the run-up to elections encouraging people to make sure they're registered. If you move house and register somewhere new you have to give your old address, and you get struck off from the previous roll there even if it is a different part of the country. When you register a death that also results in the deceased person being automatically removed from the electoral register.

I usually work as a polling station presiding officer (as a council employee I get a day's paid leave to do it, plus the normal PO remittance of about $280 after tax) and you do usually get a handful of unregistered people turning up to vote, though normally you can work out the reason. We don't have election day registration but if the person is not registered because of a clerical error (e.g. they have had their name removed in error, or there are two people at the address with similar names who have been treated as one) that can be resolved provided they phone the electoral registration office before 6pm. When that happens the presiding officer gets a phone call from the election office and given details of the voter to record on a form, whereupon the elector is allowed to vote normally.