Two states have taken big steps to eliminate voter registrations for tens of thousands of inactive and fraudulent voters with campaigns that have dumped over 500,000 names from the rolls.
But most states still have voter rolls fattened with millions of ineligible names and are not taking steps to true their voter records.
This week two states, West Virginia and Indiana, have announced that hundreds of thousands of improper voter registrations were trimmed from the rolls to more correctly reflect their proper eligible voter totals.
On Wednesday, the State of Indiana announced the elimination of over 481,000 inactive or incorrect voter registrations. On the same day, the Secretary of State of West Virginia announced another in its continuing effort to true its voter rolls by noting it had trimmed 47,000 inactive or outdated voter registrations.
Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson reported that 481,235 voter registration records have been corrected since November in accordance with federal law.
The move in Indiana is also in compliance with a state law passed in 2014 to purge voter rolls of incorrect, fraudulent, duplicate, or inactive voters.
West Virginia has also been undertaking a campaign to true its voter rolls and has thus far trimmed 47,000 outdated or ineligible voter registrations from the state’s voting system, including 1,170 ineligible felons.
“In just 93 days, we’ve proven that we can make great strides in cleaning up our voter files when we work together with our county clerks. We still have a lot of work to do, and I’m confident that we’ll get the job done,” West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner said in an April 19 press release.
Warner kicked off his voter roll purge to fulfill one of his campaign promises after assuming the office in January of last year.
The West Virginia Republican also noted that his campaign for correcting the voter rolls is an ongoing process that will continue throughout his tenure.
“Once we start, it’s much easier to stay on top of the list and to keep every county voter file up-to-date,” Warner said in his statement. “That’s one of the best ways to instill confidence into our elections.”
Similar but sporadic moves to trim improper registrations have occurred in counties in such states as Oregon, Mississippi, and New Mexico, but in many other states no such effort has been made, meaning that millions of improper registrations are still on the books offering fraudsters a perfect avenue to commit vote fraud.
A warning recently issued by government watchdog group Judicial Watch alleged that 90 counties and 11 states maintain voter rolls that are choked with illegal voters, voters who have passed away, or voters registered in multiple locations.
In its filing, Judicial Watch points out that these states and counties see voter rolls upon which the number of registered voters exceeds the number of voting-age citizens residing there.
The group warned 11 states to correct their voter rolls and demanded that they begin obeying federal law and properly maintain voter rolls. Those states include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
A spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation said there are millions of voter records across the country that belong to people that have relocated or died, and those outdated registrations are still waiting to be removed. Federal law requires that after a county is notified by a source other than the voter in question, their record is no longer accurate and they must be placed in an “inactive” status for at least two federal election cycles before they can be removed like IN and WV just did.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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