More than 19 million voters have been removed from voting rolls. Could you be one of them?
What do a bunch of police officers, senior citizens, and (legal) immigrants who are registered to vote in different parts of the country have in common? Well, they’ve been removed from voter rolls ahead of what many call the most consequential election in recent history.
Over the last two decades, election officials have increased the rate at which they purge voter rolls. In fact, more than 19 million voters were removed from the rolls between 2020 and 2022, which marks a 21 percent increase from 2014 to 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent government agency.
It’s not only happening in predominantly conservative states like Texas and Alabama but also in battleground states like North Carolina, which are must-wins for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.
But is it just routine roll maintenance, or is something more nefarious at play? We examined what’s happening in several states.
What are voter purges, and why are they controversial?
A voter purge is when election officials delete names to “clean” up voting rolls. According to Megan Bellamy, vice president of law and policy for Voting Rights Lab, the majority of these removals are people who have moved or died.
But this otherwise mundane maintenance process has been politicized in recent years as election denial groups challenge voters’ eligibility. For instance, a conservative group known as True the Vote has challenged tens of thousands of Texans over their voter eligibility, including cops and members of the military. The organization’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has also called on supporters to help by using an app called IV3 to research voter data and submit challenges to their local election offices. The problem is their submissions are often riddled with errors and complicate the work election officials are already doing to keep voting rolls up-to-date.
While Engelbrecht wants to “empower citizens to ensure accurate, secure, and fair elections,” some worry that this push could lead to “unlawful disenfranchisement” of vulnerable groups, such as groups of people registered to vote at assisted-living facilities and homeless shelters. For others, it’s just plain frustrating: “My simple right as a voter is being attacked,” Daniel Moss, whose registration was challenged despite being a longtime resident in Denton County, Texas, told CNN.
Texas is hardly an isolate case, though. There are now at least three dozen pending cases related to voter roll maintenance in 19 states like Georgia and Florida, according to the Democracy Docket, which tracks election litigation. This even includes crucial battleground states. Just last week, North Carolina’s State Board of Elections issued a statement saying that it had removed 747,000 people from the state’s voting list because they were deemed ineligible following a lawsuit by the Republican National Convention. The Democracy Docket estimates that 246,000 of these voters were taken off the rolls because they hadn’t cast a ballot in the last two presidential elections.
“No one should lose their ballot access because they chose not to vote,” a spokesperson for the Democracy Docket tells us. “North Carolina is one of 20 states that cancel voter registrations based on inactivity. It’s possible these voters will not know that their registrations were canceled until they show up to vote and will need to re-register in order to cast a ballot — and at that point, it could be too late.”
Are voters notified when they’re removed from the rolls?
Another common problem is that voters aren’t always notified when their voter registration is canceled because it varies from state to state. Obviously, if you’re dead, you won’t be notified, but you should be if you have moved within the state.
Bellamy says federal law requires election officials (except in six states, including New Hampshire and Wisconsin) to contact voters at their listed address to confirm or update their registration. If they don’t over the next two federal elections, they’ll be rendered inactive and removed from the rolls. And, of course, if you’ve relocated, you might not ever receive that notice.
Are voter purges legal?
These purges aren’t always legal — and Alabama is a prime example of this. The Justice Department and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice have separately filed lawsuits against the state, claiming that it illegally purged voters too close to the upcoming election. Under the National Voter Registration Act, election officials aren’t allowed to remove voters from rolls less than 90 days before an election to prevent last-minute mistakes. As for Alabama’s case, officials tried canceling voter registrations 84 days before the Nov. 4 election.
These lawsuits come after Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen announced a plan in August to delete noncitizens from the voting rolls, citing 3,251 “noncitizens” who had been registered to vote. However, both lawsuits show that the purge actually mistakenly swept up legal American residents, including immigrants who have become naturalized citizens.
“The Secretary of State needs to be a lot more transparent about the process that he uses to remove voters from the rolls,” Allison Hamilton, the executive director of the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, tells us. “He also needs to be more collaborative with organizations that help voters ensure they’re notified and have the opportunity to re-register.”
The case is part of a concerted effort by the Republican Party to claim that noncitizens are illegally voting in federal elections falsely. Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, among other Republicans, have argued that noncitizen voting is widespread in what appears to be a preemptive move to excuse Trump’s potential loss. But in reality, illegal voting is extremely rare: The right-leaning Heritage Foundation cited less than 100 examples of noncitizens voting between 2002 and 2022, and the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice only found 30 instances in the 2016 election.
How can you check to see if you’re registered to vote or have been purged?
The good news is that you can check to see if you’ve been affected by any potential voter purges in your state. Bellamy advises checking your registration status by contacting your local election authority or looking up your registration status via Vote.org.
“If you can’t locate a record of your registration, don’t lose hope,” she says. “Twenty-eight states offer some form of same-day voter registration. But Keep in mind, some states cut off new voter registrations about a month ahead of Election Day — that means it’s important that voters with any uncertainty check their registration status now.”
