On Friday October 18, a federal district judge in Virginia’s northern district rejected the Democratic Party’s request for an injunction blocking the removal of 38,000 voters from the Virginia voter rolls. Democrats contended that the lists used to remove voters are inaccurate. The road to this case emerged in the spring of 2013, when the state board of elections, in an attempt to combat voter fraud, decided to examine the Virginia voter rolls to weed out voters also registered in other states. The purge was conducted using a program called Crosscheck, which matches Virginia’s rolls against voters registered in other states. Crosscheck revealed 308,000 Virginia voters with duplicate registrations. Twenty-five states use this program. Democrats contend that it is “deeply flawed.” The decision to remove voters from the rolls resulted from Virginia state code “§ 24.2-404(4) and the newly enacted §§ 24.2-404(10) and 24.2-404.4 effective July 1, 2013. These statutes collectively require the State Board of Elections” (SBE) to coordinate with other states to identify and remove duplicate voter registrations to avoid voter fraud, explained Secretary of State Board of Elections Don Palmer in an interview with State of Elections (SOE). The board then voted “to refer any alleged double voting” to the office of the Attorney General, headed by gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli.
“While not widespread there have been instances of double voting by individuals with registrations in two states,” Palmer said. He explained the process narrowing the initial 308,000 duplicate registration voters to the 38,000 voters actually removed from the voter rolls:
After receiving the initial list of 308,000 duplicate voters, minus those who had already been removed for other reasons, “the General Registrar then review[ed] the data provided in a spreadsheet on each registration and also reviewed our statewide database and voter history to determine if there was any registration or voting history of the individual to indicate that the person may have moved back to Virginia or voted in Virginia. If so, the individual should not be removed from the voter rolls. If there was no subsequent history of registration or voting in Virginia, the individuals should be cancelled pursuant to the notice from the other state” where they are registered, Secretary Palmer explained. He added that where contact information was available, some registrars called or e-mailed flagged individuals to confirm their status as a Virginia resident.
Full Article: 38,000 Voters Removed from Virginia’s Voter Rolls : State of Elections.