New Hampshire: State Says ‘Miscommunication’ to Blame for Notice Telling Towns to Remove Voters from Checklists | NHPR

The Secretary of State’s office says “miscommunication” is to blame for a message that appeared to direct local officials to strike the names of some voters from checklists without notifying them first. “It was miscommunication, pure and simple,” Deputy Secretary of State Dave Scanlan said. “What should have been a very quiet summer for us has actually been incredibly busy. There are a number of groups that have filed lawsuits against the election laws, and they file those against our office — so we’re dealing with that. We’re dealing with numerous right-to-know requests. We’re trying to train election officials. There’s only so many of us that can go around. You can understand how a miscommunication can take place,” Scanlan added, “and we just have to work harder at it, that’s all.”

New Hampshire: State Sends Mixed Signals to Towns on Rules for Removing Voters from Checklists | NHPR

The Secretary of State’s office had to backtrack this week on its instructions about how to handle voters flagged through the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck System. It initially suggested local checklist supervisors could remove people from local rolls without notifying them first. The Crosscheck system is a multi-state database that’s been promoted as a tool to catch potential cases of voter fraud — in part, because it’s designed to flag people who are registered in multiple states. New Hampshire agreed to join the program last year. (The system has been championed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the chair of the Trump administration’s election commission who recently came under fire for alleging that out-of-state voters swayed the outcome of New Hampshire’s elections.)

Ohio: Sen. Sherrod Brown and others criticize Ohio’s voter culling process in Supreme Court briefs | Cleveland Plain Dealer

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown joined critics of Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s process for purging inactive voters from the state’s rolls today in filing briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court. Brown, a Democrat who held Husted’s job from 1983 to 1991 and worked in Congress to pass the National Voter Registration Act, argued that Husted’s procedure for voiding registrations of people who haven’t voted in several years “would wrongly cancel the registrations of thousands of eligible Ohio voters.” “Citizens have the right not to vote for any reason, and states cannot penalize them for doing so by canceling their registrations,” Brown’s legal brief said. “Ohio’s Supplemental Program does exactly that because it uses registered voters’ failure to vote as the trigger to subject them to the change-of-residence confirmation process.”

Georgia: ACLU demanding changes from Secretary of State’s office | WXIA

The ACLU of Georgia is challenging Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and the secretary of state’s office over their list maintenance procedures and compliance with federal and state law. In particular, they — along with several other organizations, including the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda — are pointing out that nearly 160,000 Georgia voters who have moved within the same county have recently been threatened with being placed on “inactive” status if they did not respond within 30 days, in violation of both federal and state law.

Ohio: Parties in lawsuit call Ohio purges voter suppression | Associated Press

Groups challenging Ohio’s system for removing inactive voters from rolls are disagreeing with the state elections chief’s arguments and the Trump administration’s contention that the purges are legal. The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York-based public advocacy group Demos said in their latest U.S. Supreme Court filing that targeting registered voters who fail to vote in a two-year period for eventual removal from the registration rolls, even if they haven’t moved and remain eligible, is a tool for voter suppression.

Kansas: In Response To Justice Department, Kobach Cites Voter Database As Key Kansas Resource | HPPR

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is touting a controversial multistate voter database as a key resource in response to U.S. Department of Justice questions about Kansas’ compliance with federal voting law. In a recent letter to the Justice Department, obtained by the Kansas News Service through an open records request, Kobach describes the database as “one of the most important systems” Kansas uses to check the accuracy of voter rolls. … Critics, however, question the program’s value, saying poor data quality means there is far greater potential for mistakenly assuming people with the same name and birthdate to be the same person.

New York: Board of Elections sued over voter roll purges | Associated Press

New York is wrongly purging voter rolls to remove the names of supposedly inactive voters, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of a government watchdog group. The legal challenge against state elections officials argues the state’s purging policy violates federal law governing how states can scrub names from their list of registered voters. “New York’s outdated policies disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters in clear violation of the National Voter Registration Act,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the good government group Common Cause-New York. The state’s aggressive purging policy was highlighted in last year’s elections, when tens of thousands of names were purged from voter rolls in Brooklyn, prompting widespread complaints from voters forced to cast affidavit ballots.

National: US Commission on Civil Rights: Trump’s reversal on voter case could lead to ‘disenfranchisement’ | Washington Examiner

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights argued Friday that the Trump administration’s decision to support the way Ohio removes people from its voter rolls could lead to the disenfranchisement of more voters. Last year, the Obama administration filed an amicus brief in favor of civil rights groups who were challenging the way Ohio purges its voter rolls. But under the Trump administration, the Justice Department switched sides, and in August it filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the state of Ohio.

Alabama: Groups Asks Alabama to Restore Voters to ‘Active’ Status | Associated Press

A civil rights organization is asking Alabama’s secretary of state to restore hundreds of thousands of people to active voter status after what the group described as widespread confusion in election day. In a Friday letter to Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it believes large numbers of people were incorrectly moved to inactive voting status during an update of rolls. Merrill responded that his office followed the law. The secretary of state’s office said 340,162 people were put on inactive voter status in the required update of voting rolls.

Editorials: Purging voter rolls to suppress turnout | Baltimore Sun

Last week, the U.S. Solicitor General took the unusual step of reinterpreting a 24-year-old federal statute specifically designed to convenience voting in order to switch sides in a pending Supreme Court case that centers on Ohio’s aggressive purging of voter rolls. The Trump Justice Department now sides with Ohio, which contends that not voting for six years — and then not responding to a single mailing asking the voter to confirm his or her registration — is sufficient to remove that person from state voter rolls. That should cause no small amount of alarm. It’s part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to restrict voting rights under the guise of fighting fraud, which is nearly non-existent. The true purpose is to keep from the polls individuals who are less likely to support Republican candidates or causes. And it’s a potential stake through the heart of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the “Motor Voter Act,” which was meant to expand, not shrink, the nation’s voter registration rolls.

Ohio: Battle over how Ohio maintains voter rolls nearing conclusion | NBC

How Ohio maintains its voter registration rolls has been under legal attack for well over a year. The war of interpretation is approaching its end before the U.S. Supreme Court. For decades Ohio has maintained its voter rolls the same way, under both Democrat and Republican leadership. When someone uses the US postal service for a change of address, is convicted of a felony or files a death certificate, appropriate action is taken to adjust the voter’s registration to prevent fraud.

West Virginia: Secretary of State’s Office sends notices to outdated voter registrations | The Independent Herald

In an effort to keep the state’s voter registration rolls as up to date as possible, the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office on Aug. 9 mailed about 130,000 postcards to registered voters whose addresses have been flagged as outdated. By updating voter registrations, West Virginia Elections Director Donald Kersey said the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office is not only complying with the duties outlined in the National Voter Registration Act but is also ensuring the integrity of any election. … Kersey said the roughly 130,000 registered voters represent about 11 percent of the total population of registered voters. He added that by updating the state’s voter registration rolls, the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office is able to get an accurate picture of voter turnout.

Editorials: Don’t suppress the vote, but keep track of voters | Los Angeles Times

Reversing the position it took during the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump last week asked the Supreme Court to uphold a procedure the state of Ohio wants to use to purge some voters from its election rolls — a practice that disproportionately disenfranchises poor and minority voters. The court should decline the invitation and rule that Ohio is violating the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. That landmark law prohibits states from purging registered voters from the rolls just because they failed to vote. Ohio argues that its procedure is justified by language added to federal law in 2002. But the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the state’s interpretation last year. The appeals court said that using a lack of voter activity as a “trigger” for beginning the purge process made a “paper tiger” of the law’s ban on purges for not voting.

Editorials: Partners in Voter Suppression | The New York Times

The Trump administration moved deeper into the politics of voter suppression this week by reversing the federal government’s opposition to Ohio’s effort to purge tens of thousands of voters from the rolls simply because they vote infrequently. A federal appeals court blocked Ohio’s move last year as a violation of voting laws, in a case brought by civil rights advocates and backed by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice. Now that an appeal has been accepted for this term by the Supreme Court, Trump appointees at Justice — not career professionals — have changed the government’s position to side with Ohio, in effect endorsing the purge and asking that it be allowed to go forward.

Florida: Counties say purges fixing ‘excessive voter’ claims | Journal Courier

Two counties identified as having more registered voters than citizen voting age population by a watchdog organization say they have rectified the issue. In April, the watchdog group Judicial Watch sent a letter to the Illinois State Board of Elections identifying 24 counties that had more registered voters than voting-age population. Two west-central Illinois counties, Cass and Scott, have nearly or totally corrected the issue, according to officials. Scott County Clerk Sandy Hankins addressed the matter with the board of commissioners in July, noting that the state felt the county was within regulation. However, Hankins took steps to correct any problems by mailing new voter identification cards.

Ohio: Justice Dept. Backs Ohio’s Effort to Purge Infrequent Voters From Rolls | The New York Times

The Justice Department has thrown its weight behind Ohio in a high-profile legal fight over the state’s purging of infrequent voters from its election rolls, reversing the federal government’s position under the Obama administration that the practice was unlawful. The move was the latest in a series of changes the department has made in how it enforces civil rights law under the Trump administration. The dispute centers on an aggressive practice used in Ohio, a crucial swing state in presidential elections, that removes voters who sit out three election cycles and fail to respond to a warning. Last year, when the state sought to delete several hundred thousand registrations of infrequent voters ahead of the presidential election, civil-liberties groups filed a lawsuit against Ohio’s secretary of state, Jon Husted. After the Obama-era Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief calling the purging practices unlawful, a federal appeals court ordered Ohio to let those people vote.

New Zealand: 60,000 voters could miss out on voting in General Election | New Zealand Herald

Around 60,000 voters could miss out on voting in the September General Election after their enrolment update packs were returned marked “gone no address”. Enrolment update packs were sent to 3.15 million enrolled voters at the end of June to check their details were correctly listed on the electoral roll for the September General Election. Voters whose packs are returned to sender are taken off the electoral roll. “Those voters need to get back on the roll now so their vote will count this election,” chief electoral officer, Alicia Wright said.

Editorials: The Trump Justice Department joins the GOP crusade to shrink the vote | The Washington Post

The idea that voting should be encouraged, and voter registration simple, has been a touchstone of federal law for decades. That idea is now under assault by Republicans in statehouses across the country and, more recently, in the Trump Justice Department. On Monday, political appointees in Justice engineered an about-face in the government’s position on a key voting rights case before the Supreme Court, backing Ohio’s efforts to purge hundreds of thousands of infrequent voters from the state’s voter rolls. You read that right. According to Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, who is now running for governor, it’s okay for a state to disqualify people from voting in the future if they haven’t voted in the recent past — specifically, in the past six years.

Editorials: Jeff Sessions’ DOJ just gave states the green light to purge voter rolls | Mark Joseph Stern/Slate

Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice has switched sides in several key court battles, reversing positions the agency took during the Obama era. Already, the DOJ has withdrawn its opposition to Texas’ draconian voter ID law and to mandatory arbitration agreements designed to thwart class actions. Now the agency has made another about-face: On Monday, it dropped its objections to Ohio’s voter purge procedures, which kick voters off the rolls for skipping elections. The DOJ is now arguing that such maneuvers are perfectly legal. Ohio’s voter purges are at issue in a Supreme Court case, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, which the justices will hear next term. The state purges voters from the rolls relentlessly, removing around 2 million people between 2011 and 2016—with voters in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods twice as likely to be purged as those in Republican-leaning neighborhoods. While most states regularly clean up their voter rolls, Ohio is unusually aggressive in targeting individuals because they have not recently cast a ballot. Up to 1.2 million of those 2 million purged voters may have been removed for infrequent voting.

Georgia: Legislators hold joint press conference on improper voter reg | WGCL

The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus (GLBC) and the Georgia House Democratic Caucus will hold a press conference on Wednesday, August 9, 2017, at 1 p.m. in room 610 of the Coverdell Legislative Office Building in Atlanta. The press conference will address improper voter registration purge notices. “The purpose of the press conference is two-fold,” said State Representative William Boddie (D-East Point), GLBC Communications Chair. “First, we want to encourage all registered Georgia voters to exercise their constitutional right to vote so that no registered voter will be in jeopardy of being purged from state’s voting rolls. #url#

Ohio: Justice Department reverses position to support Ohio purging inactive voters in high-profile case | The Washington Post

The Justice Department has reversed itself in a high-profile voting case in Ohio to side with the state and allow the purging of voters from the rolls for not answering election mail and not voting in recent elections. In a court filing Monday, Justice attorneys took the opposite position from the Obama administration in a case that involved the state’s removal of thousands of inactive voters from the Ohio voting rolls. Civil rights groups last year challenged Ohio’s process, arguing that such purges are prohibited under the National Voter Registration Act. The Justice Department under Obama filed an amicus brief siding with the groups, and the Supreme Court is set to hear the case in the next term. But in an unusual turn, the department filed a new amicus brief Monday arguing that the purges of voters are legal under federal law. This brief, unlike the prior one, was not signed by career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division.

Colorado: Denver Cleaned Up Its Voter Rolls and Boosted Turnout, Too | NBC

Denver, Colorado, has spent the last eight years modernizing its elections, offering a model for how a city and county successfully maintains voter rolls. The city began taking steps in 2009 to make it easier for voters to cast ballots, officials to count them, and administrators to maintain accurate, clean voter rolls. In the process, they’ve increased voter turnout and saved taxpayers money. In the 2016 general election, turnout was at 72 percent — up six points from the city’s 2008’s turnout, and ten points higher than the national average in 2016, according to the city’s data. The effort has driven election costs down, from $6.51 per voter to $4.15 per voter.

Florida: Broward County voter rolls case has national implications | Sun Sentinel

A federal judge could soon make a national example out of Broward County’s elections office. Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes has been on trial, defending her office against claims it isn’t doing enough to remove ineligible voters from the county’s voter rolls, a practice that could lead to voter fraud. Snipes asserts that she’s making a reasonable effort to keep the lists up to date and is doing everything the law requires. The county’s elections office is one of more than 140 nationwide that have been accused of having more registered voters than eligible voting-age residents. Several organizations have threatened lawsuits if the counties don’t get more aggressive at removing ineligible voters from their lists. The Broward case is the first to go to trial, and it’s seen as a possible precedent for others.

Editorials: The real problems with voting today | Michael A. Smith/The Wichita Eagle

I know all about common names. I have heard all the jokes, as had my father, a unique and remarkable man named Bob Smith. Unfortunately, common names like ours are just one of many problems that will face Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in his new role as co-chair of President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission. Recall that in 2010, candidate Kobach publicly declared that he planned to remove Alfred K. Brewer from the Wichita voting rolls, because he had died. Brewer was surprised to hear this when journalists found him alive, raking leaves. The deceased was actually his father, Alfred K. Brewer Sr., who would have been 110 at the time. Screening lists for suffixes like “Junior,” “Senior” and “III” is not a foolproof procedure. For example, former President George W. Bush is not a “Junior” because he lacks one of his father’s two middle names. How about birthdays? A few years ago, two political scientists studied Georgia’s voter rolls, only to discover numerous instances of two different people (and in a few cases, more than two) with the same matching first, middle, and last names and birthdays — including the year. Seem unlikely? Georgia has nearly 5 million registered voters, so even a one-in-a-million chance means there will be a few such cases — and with common names, the chances of a name and birthday match are considerably higher.

Ohio: Trump Administration Stirs Alarm Over Voter Purges | NBC

Larry Harmon, 60, hadn’t voted in a while when he drove to the high school in November 2015 to weigh in on a local referendum in Kent, Ohio. But he wasn’t allowed to cast his ballot. “I served in the military and they tell us, ‘Oh, you’re fighting for freedom.'” he said. “Then you come back and you’re taken off the voter rolls because you didn’t vote for two elections? That doesn’t make sense. I thought that was our right.” Thanks to six years of inactivity — and a single piece of unanswered mail asking him to confirm his voter registration — Harmon, now a plaintiff in a major voter purge lawsuit before the Supreme Court, was removed from Ohio’s voter rolls. “I’ve been paying my taxes, paying my property taxes, registering my car,” he said. “All the data was there for (election officials) to know that I was there.” Harmon was a casualty of the latest voting battleground: How America’s lists of registered, eligible voters are maintained.

Georgia: Elections watchdog group seeks answers after Georgia drops 590,000 from voter rolls | Mic

A watchdog group is pushing the state of Georgia to explain why more than 591,000 people were struck from the voter rolls. “Each of the 591,548 voters affected by the move had already been on the state’s ‘inactive’ registration list,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported this week. That means those voters had not cast a ballot, updated their registration or address or responded to efforts to contact them for at least three years. Let America Vote, an advocacy group run by former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, wrote in a Wednesday letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp that federal law doesn’t permit the purge of voters simply for not voting.

Georgia: State cancels more than 591,500 voter records | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Georgia canceled the registration of more than a half-million voters over the weekend, part of an ongoing round of maintenance to clean up the state’s voting rolls. Each of the 591,548 voters affected by the move had already been on the state’s “inactive” registration list. That means they had not voted, updated their voter registration information, filed a change of name or address, signed a petition or responded to attempts to confirm their last known address for at least the past three years. None of the voters had had any contact with local election officials or the state since at least Sept. 16, 2014, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.

Ohio: Secretary of State tells Supreme Court that state’s voter purge practices are legal | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted on Monday defended Ohio’s practice of beginning the process to cancel registrations of voters who haven’t cast ballots in two years, telling the U.S. Supreme Court its actions are needed to keep accurate voter rolls. In a legal brief, Husted said the state’s procedure doesn’t violate a federal prohibition against removing individuals for failing to vote. The brief said election boards ask inactive registrants to confirm their eligibility. Failure to respond to those confirmation notices – not failure to vote – is what triggers cancellation of a voter’s registration.

Georgia: Cleanup of state’s voter rolls underway | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s biennial effort to clean up the state’s voter rolls got underway weeks ago, with address confirmation notices going out to hundreds of thousands of residents across metro Atlanta and the state. The action in many ways is routine, while also an important part of the elections process. It ensures an accurate and current voter registration list, a central goal for every state in the nation and required under federal law. But this year, the stakes somehow seem higher. The mailing of the notices unintentionally coincides with a request from the U.S. Justice Department to 44 states including Georgia asking how they remove voters from the rolls who should no longer be eligible to vote.

Editorials: The Voter Purges Are Coming | Vanita Gupta/The New York Times

The Trump administration’s election-integrity commission will have its first meeting on Wednesday to map out how the president will strip the right to vote from millions of Americans. It hasn’t gotten off to the strongest start: Its astonishing request last month that each state hand over voters’ personal data was met with bipartisan condemnation. Yet it is joined in its efforts to disenfranchise citizens by the immensely more powerful Justice Department. Lost amid the uproar over the commission’s request was a letter sent at the same time by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. It forced 44 states to provide extensive information on how they keep their voter rolls up-to-date. It cited the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the Motor-Voter law, which mandates that states help voters register through motor vehicle departments. The letter doesn’t ask whether states are complying with the parts of the law that expand opportunities to register. Instead it focuses on the sections related to maintaining the lists. That’s a prelude to voter purging.