Focused Read in 3:30-4 minutes
( Meme information, courtesy of C-SPAN and you can read more about Justice Brennan, courtesy of the Center, here )
“Voter
Purges: The Risks in 2018”
OR:
Why you have to make sure you periodically check your voter
registration status because if there is a way GOP is going to
suppress voting...
"Voter purges — the often
controversial practice of removing voters from registration lists in
order to keep them up to date — are poised to be one of the biggest
threats to the ballot in 2018.
Activist groups and some state
officials have mounted alarming campaigns to purge voters without
adequate safeguards.
If successful, these efforts could lead to a
massive number of eligible, registered voters losing their right to
cast a ballot this fall.
Properly done, efforts to
clean up voter rolls are important for election integrity and
efficiency. Done carelessly or hastily, such efforts are prone to
error, the effects of which are borne by voters who may show up to
vote only to find their names missing from the list.
Many of the voter purge
efforts examined by the Brennan Center for Justice here not only risk
disenfranchisement, but also run afoul of federal legal requirements.
These efforts point to a decentralized, hard-to-trace mode of voter
suppression — one that is perhaps less sweeping than voter ID,
proof-of-citizenship, and similar legislation enacted by 23 states
over the last decade.
But the effect of voter purges can be equally
devastating.
One example? In 2016,
Arkansas’ secretary of state sent county clerks the names of more
than 50,000 people who were supposedly ineligible to vote because of
felony convictions.
Those county clerks began to remove voters
without any notice. The state later discovered the purge list was
riddled with errors:
it included at least 4,000 people who did not
have felony convictions.
And among those on the list who once
had a disqualifying conviction, up to 60 percent of those individuals
were Americans who were eligible to vote because they had their
voting rights restored back to them.
Counties scrambled to fix
the mistakes right before a school board race and weeks before the
presidential election, but clerks admitted they would have a hard
time restoring all the voters to the rolls in time.
... In 2014 and 2015, the
Brooklyn Board of Elections purged more than 110,000 voters who had
not voted since 2008, and another 100,000 who had supposedly changed
their addresses.
There was no public announcement that this would be
done.
Some of those voters were given a paltry three weeks’ notice
before removal,
and thousands of voters showed up at the 2016 primary
elections and discovered that their names were missing from the
rolls.
After a lawsuit, the Board of Elections restored registration
records —
but by that point, the voters had missed their
opportunity to cast a ballot in the primary.
A decade ago, the Brennan
Center published the first comprehensive examination of voter purges.
We found a patchwork of inconsistent, error-prone practices for
removing voters from the rolls. These problematic purges have
occurred for a variety of reasons.
Election officials depend on
unreliable sources to determine that individuals are no longer
eligible to vote,
use poor methodology to compare the voter
registration list with sources of potentially ineligible individuals,
conduct voter removal without notice,
or fail to provide appropriate
protections to voters before removing them.
There is reason to believe
problems will be especially acute and widespread in 2018.
Here are
four voter purge vulnerabilities to watch out for this year:"
One
" ... “Challenge Purges”
and Other Misuse of Challenger Laws
…
Most states have “challenger” laws allowing officials, or even
private parties, to question voters’ eligibility at the polls on
Election Day.
These laws
are designed to apply to a different set of circumstances than the
laws governing purges, but are sometimes being used in their stead.
Under
federal law, states may not conduct large scale, systematic purges of
the voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. This buffer,
Congress found, is needed to detect and correct the inevitable errors
that arise from mass purges.
Challenger
laws, on the other hand, operate much closer to elections without
this safeguard. Traditionally, they have been used to target voters
individually as they seek to vote rather than to delete large numbers
of voter registrations at the same time.
Recently, election officials and outside agitators have attempted to
blur these lines by issuing batch challenges to a large pool of
voters all at once.
They have been helped by laws in at least fifteen
states that allow challenges not only to voting, but also to
registration, before the election even occurs.
Challenger laws were
already troublesome to those voters who were challenged individually,
but now they’re being exploited to conduct what is, in effect, a
mass purge.
A
purge of this variety can both be an end-run around federal
protections against wrongful removals and, like with most purges, be
difficult to detect until it is too late.
This risk is not
hypothetical: High-profile attempts to use challenger laws to
accomplish “challenge purges” have been exposed before
each of the last few elections. … “
Two
" ... “New Potential for
“Noncitizen” Voter Purges
There is a substantial
threat that some election officials will initiate purges of suspected
noncitizens this year.
Without any evidence of a problem, the
president and like-minded allies have raised the specter of
noncitizen voting since the 2016 election.
This creates a political
incentive to hunt for noncitizen voters on the rolls.
... One notorious example was
Florida’s 2012 purge.
The secretary of state initially
reported that a cross-reference of the voter rolls with driver’s
license data showed up to 180,000 noncitizens were registered in the
state.
State officials then compiled a list of more than 2,600 voters
for counties to purge, right before the federal election that year.
The program was ultimately blocked by a federal court.
As it turned
out, upon further examination only 85 individuals were found
appropriate for removal on the grounds that they were noncitizens
(and only one was actually charged for voting).
Florida’s experience is
illustrative of a broader problem with noncitizen voter purges.
The
state relied on its driver’s license database to create a purge
list, but DMV records are unreliable for this purpose.
A noncitizen
could get a driver’s license in 2014, become a U.S. citizen in
2015, and register to vote in 2016 — not at all an unusual
occurrence given that state driver’s licenses last many years
without requiring renewal.
In almost all instances,
initial estimates of noncitizens on voter registration rolls based on
DMV lists prove vastly inflated. … “
Three
" ... “Interstate
Crosschecking is Posing New Threats
This
year, there are new reasons for concern over efforts to purge the
voter rolls using the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck
(“Crosscheck”) program.
Crosscheck contains records for 26 states
and nearly 100 million voters.
Sharing
voter data across state lines is not new, but there are problems with
Crosscheck that should cause concern. First, Crosscheck data
is inaccurate (and not secure).
… When state or local
officials first get the data, they may not understand that it is
unreliable or that further checks are needed before removing voters.
In 2013 state elections, Virginia found error rates as high at 17
percent when it removed 40,000 voters during its initial use of the
program.
The next year, Ada County, Idaho, used the program for the
first time and removed 765 people without prior notice. Many voters
pointed out errors, and counties scrambled to restore registrations.
In other states, 2018
could mark the first time that voters who were flagged by Crosscheck
several years ago will actually be removed.
Federal law allows states
to begin a multi-year removal process for voters flagged as
potentially ineligible. States first send voters a notification in
the mail. If the voter does not respond, and does not vote in the
next two federal elections, the voter can be removed.
So, the effects
of problematic matches that occurred four or five years ago could
first materialize this election — in 2013 and 2014, six states
joined Crosscheck.
Meanwhile, Indiana passed
a law in 2017 that allows voters to be removed immediately based on a
Crosscheck match. Previously, the state removed voters only after
notice, then waiting two even-year elections, as required by federal
law. This illustrates the danger posed by the program.
If
Crosscheck erroneously lists an Indiana voter as having registered in
another state, that voter could be purged right away.”
Four
" ... “Voter Fraud
Vigilantes” and the Trump Administration are Pressuring States
Voter fraud alarmists are
increasingly focusing their efforts on the registration rolls.
In
recent years, organizations such as the American Civil Rights Union
(ACRU), Judicial Watch, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), and
True the Vote have both threatened and filed lawsuits seeking to
institute more aggressive purge practices.
These groups have targeted
more than 250 jurisdictions in 2017 alone, and more than 400
jurisdictions across the country since 2014.
The most strident
attempts to force purges often focus on minority counties. Some of
the counties contacted have limited resources to defend themselves.
Another threat looms as
well.
In June 2017, the Department of Justice quietly demanded that
44 states provide detailed information on how they maintain voter
registration lists.
Observers noted that this could be a prelude to
legal action to force states to conduct purges.
A former head of the
DOJ’s Civil Rights Division called the mass request for information
“virtually unprecedented.” DOJ could be actively pressuring
more states to purge the rolls.
Although many problems
that have persisted with purges for more than a decade remain the
same, new threats are emerging in 2018.
Those wishing to purge the
rolls, whether they be elected officials or private parties, are
finding increasingly inventive ways to do so, such as abuse of
challenger laws.
The politicization of noncitizen voting and
immigration in general provides an incentive to hunt for noncitizens
on the rolls in a dangerous way, possibly with an assist from DHS.
In
some states, Crosscheck errors could present themselves for the first
time this year, and all across the country, there is increased
pressure on states and localities to purge the rolls, whether brought
by individual fraud vigilantes or the Trump Administration itself.
Voters, civic groups, and election officials must remain alert and
guard against these threats in 2018.”
You
can read more here
( You can find the report here )
* See Vote 411 at the bottom of the page to register to vote or to check your registration status ...
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You can share Berman's Tweet here
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→ Direct sources for Democrats:
* ( Personal favored and most informative follows are shared here with the understanding that readers will always apply their own critical thinking to any information provided anywhere by anyone. #StrongerTogether does not share sources of information lightly but -- no one is perfect! -- so always #DistrustAndVerify I am using a star rating that is strictly based on my situational experience with the work of the media personality specifically in relation to issues of interest to me. )
The Democratic Party Website
Also
C-SPAN (a good place for speeches & hearings direct source (s))
→ Fact checking organizations courtesy of the Society of Professional Journalists
in alphabetical order...
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
→ Some of the most credible media -- at the moment:
📰📰📰 Mother Jones
→ Some of the most credible Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
( 📎 Interesting to note: Wallace, a former Republican (or an inactive Republican I believe she calls herself) is new to the job but for right now she has clearly put country over party and her work on Trump GOP has been credible, IMO... )
...for Networking for Democrats today!
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
📎 Note: I rarely get involved in primary races -- outside of those in my own area. And, unless there is a glaring reason that can not be ignored, I support Democratic Party nominees winning in general elections.
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(Linked) "...is our 2016 platform...a declaration of how we plan to move America forward. Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."
*
Curated by Gail Mountain, with occasional personal commentary, Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
( You can also find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GKMTNtwits )
*
See the League of Women Voters website:
Vote411 here
Thank you for focusing!
g., aka Focused Democrat
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
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