The Democrat party chair is asking the federal government to get involved in the wrongful purge of 13,000 voters in La Porte County last year. Chairman John Jones said in a press release that he will be asking the U.S. Department of Justice Election Integrity Task Force to investigate exactly how the purge happened, which he said was an “effort led by Republican voters’ appointee Donna Harris, the wife of county Republican chairman Keith Harris.” Originally some 800 inactive voters were supposed to be purged in 2011. Voters are inactive if they fail to vote over two federal election cycles, meaning they have not voted since before the 2008 election that seated President Barack Obama in office. But the 13,303 who were canceled included voters who voted in Obama’s election.
Jones went on to say that “federal law is clear that voters can only be purged if they have not voted in two federal election cycles. Yet Ms. Harris began a systematic effort to wipe off the voter rolls over 13,000 voters even though they had voted in 2008 but not voted in 2010 and 2011. Well, 2011 was city elections and that doesn’t count for purposes of a purge. This was wrong and Donna Harris and Keith Harris should have known better.”
Republican Party Chairman Keith Harris said he does not believe this was a partisan effort to eliminate Democrat voters, pointing out that it was the Republican co-director Donna, his wife, who developed the plan to correct the problem, and then led the effort to have it resolved.
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