Voter Registration Purges

Living in GA, we had complaints around the past election for Governor. It was claimed that due to purging inactive voters, people were unable to vote around election time. So what really goes on?

After about 3 years a voter is considered inactive. A letter will then be mailed to the last known address. If the user fails to respond in 30 days, they will be removed from the system. To then vote, you need to simply... register. It is all related to laws passed by Democrats in 1993, National Voter Registration Act by Bill Clinton, and in 1997, House Bill 889 signed by Zen Miller with bipartisan support.

So why purge inactive voters? If not an active voter, information may fall out of date. Let's take me for example. I lived in Upstate NY and was a registered voter. I did not actually vote until after I had moved twice, giving no updated information until I planned to vote again which just involved me registering in the area I was living at the time. Later I moved to GA giving no notice or change of address because the only thing that would have done is let junk mail follow me. Once down here I registered to vote, and did. My parents gave me a call to let me know that my name was still active to vote there as well. In the area they live, you do not need to prove who you are to vote and you basically just cross your name off of a list. Someone knowing my name and previous address could simply say they are me, get my name crossed off, and vote. Or even worse, I could have voted twice and I would be surprised if anyone caught it since I live in a different state now. The quicker it gets purged the less likely it is to happen. The difference in GA is you actually need to show an ID to vote. If that is the case, then why purge? Well to put it plainly, your ID is checked by a bunch of older people sitting at a table and no one checks if the ID is real so long as the numbers match. I might not be able to vote in multiple places in the same state, but anyone with a copy of my drivers license and some skill could probably vote for me if I did not go vote.

So the main reason to purge the system after inactivity is to try to reduce voter fraud. Plenty of notice is given and it can help clear out people who move and just simple register elsewhere. It is all part of a fairly archaic system that could use a real proper rework and update, but at the rate things move and to verify security, so on and so forth, it may be a while before that happens. The mechanism is not perfect, but it is far from targeting certain peoples unless the idea is certain groups of people are inclined to vote in rare occurrences with no notice.

Could voter registration purges be used to target specific groups? To some degree, probably. To be honest, that just really sounds like more effort than it would actually be worth. To me, the whole argument against it is about and the dangers make it seem even less effective than gerrymandering, which for reasons that should be obvious does not make a huge impact on things. The fact of the matter is there are variables that are too inconsistent and unpredictable to guarantee anything this way or that.

The best advice I can offer is vote often. There are lots of times local issues get voted on, and it is worth becoming more active in your small local government decisions. I have gone to some local votes with no knowledge of the topic, read the simple information and found issues that were actually things I did have concern over and would want to vote on. So even if you have no idea what the vote is for, it's never to late to form an opinion and make it heard to try to improve what is around you.