Our democracy works best when every voter can participate in it, but eligible voters can be removed from the voter rolls due to an unfair practice called voter purging.
Voter purges, or efforts to remove a significant number of voters from the registration rolls all at once, ultimately threaten Americans’ freedom to vote and tend to disproportionately target people with past felony convictions, voters of color, low-income voters and young voters.
This large-scale attack on Americans’ freedom to vote is the result of inconsistent and poorly developed standards for maintaining voter lists, which vary from state to state.
Voter list maintenance is a routine practice and — when done correctly — can increase the accuracy of voter rolls by removing people no longer eligible to vote in the area, such as people who have passed away or no longer live in the state.
When done incorrectly, eligible voters can be removed from their state’s list of registered voters and be denied the freedom to vote. They may not even know they’ve been purged from the voter rolls until it is too late to re-register.
In collaboration with Dēmos, Common Cause and Southern Poverty Law Center, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) released a new resource guide to serve as a tool for advocates, lawmakers, and election workers, that provides strategies to improve voter list maintenance.
Click Here to View Voter Purge Legislative Resource Guide.
We must safeguard the freedom to vote by ensuring that every eligible voter can cast their ballot without unnecessary barriers or hurdles.
State lawmakers and election officials should implement these commonsense recommendations to prevent voter purges and protect the freedom to vote in every state.