The Dirty Details of Voter Purges

Secretive, error-riddled methods for cleaning up the voter rolls and how the Help America Vote Act isn't helping.

David Rosenfeld | October 06, 2008

Thousands of Americans will likely show up to the polls on Nov. 4 to find they are no longer registered to vote. That's an estimate base on past elections and the findings of two leading research groups that found state-sanctioned voter purges are widely inaccurate.

Both the Brennan Center for Justice and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have independently called into question the methods states use to clean up their voter rolls and the integrity of the information those purges are based on. Roughly 13 million names were purged from the rolls in 2005 and 2006, and while most of the removals were legitimate, that still leaves thousands likely disenfranchised, they say.

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