WASHINGTON, DC – A four-state effort to identify and remove duplicate names from state voter registration lists may run afoul of a federal voting law by illegally purging voters, advocates warned in letters to four Midwestern secretaries of state. The Fair Elections Legal Network, Project Vote and the Brennan Center for Justice sent letters today to the Secretaries of State of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska cautioning them that they must follow the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) when cancelling the registration of voters whom they believe have moved. It was recently reported that the four states had compared their voter files to identify potentially duplicate registrations and while it appears that some of the states expressed appropriately cautious hesitation with respect to the purported duplicates, others may be acting to immediately cancel the names of individuals who appear on more than one state’s list without following the notice and waiting period requirements of the NVRA.
“Federal law establishes procedures that balance the state’s interest in maintaining accurate voter rolls with eligible voters’ interests in remaining on the voter rolls and casting their ballots,” said Karen Neuman, Legal Director of the Fair Elections Legal Network. “It is important that states follow these procedures when acting on any information that a voter has moved, whether that information comes from a list-matching exercise, as in this instance, or from any other source,” Neuman said.
“We hope these four states take a lesson from Kentucky, where a court intervened to ensure that over 8,000 voters identified in a similar multi-state comparison of voting rolls did not have their registration cancelled without the notice and waiting period required by law,” said Project Vote Deputy Director Michael Slater. “States threaten the integrity and fairness of elections when they cancel voter registrations without giving improperly purged voters timely notice and due process,” Slater said.
“We’ve seen too many examples of attempts to match one list to another, where the results are used inappropriately,” said Justin Levitt, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “Especially when comparing lists of millions of voters across state lines, there will be mistakes. It’s crucially important that policymakers and administrators vigorously protect the rights of legitimate voters in the face of these known problems.”
To view the letters, click on the state: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.