Georgia: ACLU says Georgia voting mailer is illegal | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The ACLU of Georgia says a letter mailed to nearly 50,000 Fulton County voters, telling them they could be declared inactive because they filed change of address forms but didn’t update their voter registration, is illegal. The letter states that voters have 30 days to confirm their address on their registration record before being deemed inactive, meaning they could be removed in the future. ACLU of Georgia legal director Sean J. Young said the organization plans to sue if Fulton doesn’t correct the issue. The mailers referenced by the ACLU in its Tuesday letter specifically involve voters who have moved within Fulton County. “You cannot say, ‘Do something in 30 days or something bad is going to happen to you,’” Young said. “This kind of nonsense is straight out of the voter suppression playbook.”

National: While Kobach Commission Bumbles, DOJ Sends Its Own Voter Suppression Signals | TPM

The voting rights community isn’t holding its breath for a “report” expected out of President Trump’s sham election commission that advocates predict will be used as a cudgel for restrictive voting laws. They already have a good idea of how the Trump administration, led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, will seek to scale back access to the ballot with an approach that has its antecedent in the scandal-plagued Justice Department of George W. Bush. It was signaled clearly in a under-the-radar letter sent by the DOJ to most states late last month. The letter did not get as much as attention as the wide-reaching data request from the Trump election commission—which is being led by Vice President Mike Pence and hard-right Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R)—but voting rights advocates told TPM they find it just as concerning, if not more so.

Ohio: How Trump, Russia and purging voters is shaping the race for Ohio’s next elections chief | Akron Beacon Journal

Two of the three candidates to succeed Ohio’s current secretary of state support his decision not to release sensitive voter information to President Donald Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity. And the third, who would not comment for this story, is accusing her primary opponent of not being a loyal Republican because he criticized Trump in the election. The commission, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, was formed by presidential decree in May after Trump repeatedly said he only lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton because of three to five million illegal votes. There’s no proof of such widespread voter fraud. On that, Rep. Kathleen Clyde and Sen. Frank LaRose, each a candidate for secretary of state, agree. “To say that there is massive widespread voter fraud is not correct in my assessment,” said LaRose, who didn’t mind “studying the issue.”

National: This DOJ Letter May Be More Alarming Than Trump Commission’s Request For Voter Data | HuffPost

Former Department of Justice officials and voting advocates are seriously alarmed over a DOJ letter sent to states last week that they say could signal a forthcoming effort to kick people off voter rolls. This comes as national attention focuses on several states blocking a request for voter information from President Donald Trump’s commission to investigate voting fraud, which does occur, but is not a widespread problem. The DOJ sent the letter to 44 states last Wednesday, the same day the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter controversially requesting personal voter information. The DOJ letter requests that election officials respond by detailing their compliance with a section of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which covers 44 states and was enacted to help people register to vote, but also specifies when voters may be kicked off the rolls.  Several experts said it’s difficult not to see the DOJ letter in connection with the commission’s letter as part of a multipronged effort to restrict voting rights. 

Wisconsin: State mails postcards to inactive voters | The Dunn County News

The State of Wisconsin began mailing “Notice of Suspension” postcards last week to approximately 380,000 registered voters who have not voted in the past four years. “This is an official postcard — not a scam,” said Michael Haas, Wisconsin’s chief elections official. “State law requires inactive voters to be removed from the statewide voter list, which is just one of many steps we take to ensure the integrity of voting in Wisconsin.” The Wisconsin Elections Commission is sending the postcards to voters who have not voted since the November 2012 presidential election. The postcard asks recipients whether they want to remain active on the state’s voter list. To remain active, voters have one month to mail a return postcard to their municipal clerk. Voters who do not respond will be marked as inactive on the list. Voters will also be inactivated if the postcard is undeliverable by the Post Office.

Ohio: Supreme Court Ruling On Ohio Voter Purge Will Have Long-Range Impact on Black Votes | Atlanta Black Star

The United States Supreme Court’s decision to review a challenge to Ohio’s voters roll purge policy brings the question of voter discrimination to the forefront again. In a case brought by Black trade unionist organization the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Larry Harmon, an Ohio voter, Ohio’s “Supplemental Process” is being challenged as a violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Ohio: Supreme Court to hear case on Ohio voter purges, latest in a string of voting rights cases | USA Today

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear yet another case on voting rights — not so much about who can vote, but who cannot. The justices will hear Ohio’s challenge to a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the state’s aggressive method for purging voters from its registration rolls. The decision to hear the case could signify that some of the Supreme Court’s more conservative justices believe Ohio and other states have a right to purge voters for not voting in several successive elections. Ohio says at least 10 other states have similar processes; opponents say only five do: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

Editorials: Can states adopt “use-it-or-lose-it” limits on voting rights? | Lyle Denniston/Constitution Daily

The Supreme Court, taking on another significant controversy over voting rights, agreed on Tuesday to clarify the power of states to take voters off the registration rolls if they skip going to the polls in several elections. The new case from Ohio will come up for review in the court’s term starting next fall. At issue is an appeal by state officials seeking to defend their view that federal voter registration laws allow the states to adopt limited versions of a “use-it-or-lose-it” condition on keeping a current voter registration. The appeal has the support of 15 other states, but has drawn opposition from civil rights groups who claim that “voter purge” laws are suppressing the right to vote of many thousands of citizens.

Ohio: The Supreme Court Takes Up Ohio’s Voter-Purge Case | The Atlantic

The U.S. Supreme Court will review Ohio’s contested purge of its voter rolls next term, adding a potentially major case on voting rights to its docket for the first time since Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the high court. The justices agreed to hear the case, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, in their weekly release of orders on Tuesday. At issue is the removal of tens of thousands of Ohio voters from the state’s voter list ahead of last November’s election. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the process before Election Day last year before it had fully taken effect, while a federal district court allowed 7,515 voters who had already been removed by that point to cast a ballot.

District of Columbia: D.C. to spend $3 million to get names of dead people, other errors off voter rolls | The Washington Post

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) plans to spend $3 million to overhaul the city’s voter registration database, a file that is riddled with errors, including the names of deceased residents and thousands of voters whose births erroneously date to the 1800s, according to a recent audit. The move comes as President Trump launches a commission on “election integrity” to cut down on voter fraud, but city officials say that is a coincidence. “There is no connection. This decision was made well before President Trump’s election integrity commission,” Bowser spokesman Kevin Harris said Tuesday.

Illinois: Washington County disputes voter roll allegations | SE Illinois News

Washington County is “NOT in violation” of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, County Clerk Nancy Heseman told the SE Illinois News in an email recently. Heseman was responding to allegations by a Washington-based conservative group known as Judicial Watch, which sent a letter to Illinois accusing 24 counties of being in violation off election laws. The Illinois State Board of Elections has since filed a response to Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, saying the group was wrong. “Since the advent of the statewide voter database in Illinois, the SBE has continuously monitored voter registration levels in various jurisdictions,” the letter said. “You are either working from bad data, or are misunderstanding the data you have.”

Editorials: Purging voter rolls doesn’t weed out fraud — it weeds out voters | Frederick News Post

Maryland has found itself in the crosshairs of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, which has thereatened to sue the state if a better effort isn’t made to clean up its voter rolls. Earlier this month, the group sent a letter to the Maryland State Board of Elections to complain that there are more registered voters in Montgomery County than there are voting-age residents. Judicial Watch argues the overage demonstrates that there is “strong circumstantial evidence” that non-citizens may be registered to vote in heavily-Democratic Montgomery County, which is also Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction.

West Virginia: Secretary of State Mac Warner, clerks purge voters rolls | WV MetroNews

Secretary of State Mac Warner released some stunning figures this week during an appearance on MetroNews Talkline; the names of 47,490 outdated and ineligible voters have been removed from the voter rolls just since he took office. Warner’s office and county clerks used the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) to clean up the rolls. ERIC allows participating states to compare voter eligibility records using voter registration and motor vehicle registrations, U.S. Postal Service addresses, and Social Security death records. Those 47,490 names were struck for a variety of reasons. In the most common instance, a woman changed her name when married, reregistered and was on the rolls twice. Others moved away and registered in another county or state, but remained on the books in their original location. In other cases voters were never taken off the rolls after they died.

Indiana: Nearly half a million voter registrations cancelled | NWI Times

Nearly half a million individuals have been deleted from Indiana’s list of registered voters since the Nov. 8, 2016, general election. Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson said Tuesday that the removals are part of an ongoing effort to clean up the state’s voter records after she determined her predecessors largely ignored the time-consuming task. “I discovered voter list maintenance was not being done statewide and many outdated voter registrations were still on the rolls,” Lawson said. “I made it a priority to ensure our state’s list was accurate and that we followed the federal law.” Across Indiana, 481,235 registered voters were purged, or about 10 percent of the state’s total.

Indiana: Rolls purged of inactive voters to meet state law | Tribune Star

While it’s a non-election year in Indiana, counties across the state have taken action to clean up voter registration lists. The Indiana Election Commission set a deadline of March 10 to remove inactive voters, who have not voted since 2014. Vigo County purged inactive voters on March 7. The county cut its voter registration list 10.5 percent — 7,960 voters — resulting in the county’s voter registration dipping to 71,558 from 79,518. “We knew we had a lot of voters who no longer live here,” said Robert Lawson Jr., co-director of the Vigo County Voter Registration department.

Oregon: State to spare 60,000 voters from inactive status | Statesman Journal

In Oregon — where its first-in-the-nation automatic-voter registration system has been hailed as a pioneer in knocking down voter-access barriers — it takes just five years of failing to participate in an election before a registered voter gets knocked from the active voter rolls and no longer receives a ballot in the mail. Roughly 400,000 registered Oregonian voters have been flagged as inactive at some point in time, a number that this year is expected to grow by another 30,000 who registered during the 2012 general election when President Barack Obama was up for re-election. For Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, five years isn’t long enough. So this year, he’s doubling that timeline to 10 years.

Cambodia: Audit Gives Thumbs-Up To Voter List; Doubts Linger | The Cambodia Daily

Rectifying one of the greatest sources of outrage and discontent surrounding previous elections, the voter list compiled for upcoming commune elections has passed an audit with flying colors, though commentators remain skeptical as to whether the country will actually witness free and fair elections on June 4. The Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (Comfrel) on Tuesday published its full report on the completely remade voter list, following the NGO coalition’s release of a summary at a news conference last week. “This audit found that there are significant improvements on the quality of the 2016 voter list in its completeness, currency, and accuracy compared with the previous voter list,” Comfrel’s report says.

Indonesia: Some 15,000 lose voting rights in Jakarta election | The Jakarta Post

Following months of protest by the Anies Baswedan camp concerning the possible manipulation of voter registration, the Jakarta Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) has stripped the voting rights of more than 15,000 people in the Jakarta gubernatorial election. KPU commissioner Mochammad Sidik said Tuesday that most of the 15,000 voters had been declared ineligible to vote as their identity numbers and family card numbers were not included in commission data.

Georgia: Judge dismisses suit alleging Georgia wrongly bumped voters off rolls | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge in Atlanta late Friday dismissed a lawsuit that had accused Secretary of State Brian Kemp of illegally bumping Georgia voters off the state’s rolls ahead of the 2016 presidential election. In the 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. said the state had taken a “reasonable and nondiscriminatory” approach in trying to reach voters who had not cast a recent ballot to confirm their addresses. Under state law, registered voters are mailed a confirmation notice following a more than three-year period of “no contact” with election officials. If voters do not respond to the notice within thirty days, they are designated as inactive — something that does not prevent them from voting and does not change their registration status.

Virginia: McAuliffe vetoes bills he says could restrict voting rights | CNS

Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Wednesday vetoed a bill that he said could disenfranchise qualified voters but Republican legislators said could reduce voter fraud. HB 2343, sponsored by Del. Robert Bell, R-Charlottesville, would have required the state Department of Elections to provide local registrars with a list of voters who, according to data-matching systems, have been found to be registered in another state. … In a statement explaining his veto, McAuliffe said he believed the bill would have endangered the voting rights of some Virginians and increased the administrative burden on local governments. “This bill would invite confusion and increase the possibility of violating federal law,” McAuliffe said. “Moreover, it would expose eligible and properly registered Virginians to the risk of improper disenfranchisement.”

Voting Blogs: 15 States File Amicus Brief Seeking Clarification on NVRA, Non-Voting and List Maintenance | Election Academy

Fifteen states have filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to hear a case in order to clarify if and how states may use evidence of non-voting as a factor in removing voters from the rolls. The question stems from an Ohio case I wrote about last April. There, plaintiffs challenged the state’s “supplemental process” for list maintenance, which uses failure to vote over a two-year period as a trigger for mailings seeking confirmation that the voter still wishes to vote. The allegation is that the use of non-voting as a trigger violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which expressly prohibits the removal of voters simply for failure to vote.

Wisconsin: Election officials setting stage to remove hundreds of thousands of names from the voting rolls | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin election officials are setting the stage to remove hundreds of thousands of people from the voting rolls because they have died, moved or not voted in the past four years. The voters will be notified and will have a chance to keep themselves registered to vote. Wisconsin Elections Commission approved the plan Tuesday to send postcards to up to nearly 800,000 voters by June to tell them they will be removed from the voter rolls if they don’t update their information. Also Tuesday, the commission certified to the Legislature that it has put in place a new system allowing people to use an online portal to register to vote, provided they have a valid Wisconsin driver’s license or state ID card. The system is for registering only and voters still have to cast ballots at the polls, in clerks’ offices or by mail.

New York: Purge outdated voter rolls? New York City tried it, with bad results | Associated Press

Whether you believe, or not, that voting fraud is a problem in the U.S., one thing is certain: Tidying up outdated voter rolls is sometimes easier said than done. Just ask election officials in the nation’s largest city. After an independent review found that New York City’s voting lists contained people who were dead or in prison, elections officials began an aggressive housecleaning purge in 2014 and 2015 that eliminated more than 200,000 supposedly invalid registrations ahead of last year’s elections. The result? A record number of complaints during the 2016 presidential primary from legal voters who turned up to cast a ballot, but found that they were no longer registered. “Democracy itself is under attack,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, declared last week soon after announcing plans to join a federal lawsuit against the board over the way the purge was handled.

Ohio: About 7,500 people once purged from Ohio rolls voted in November | The Toledo Blade

About 7,500 voters who were purged from Ohio voter registration rolls from 2011-2014 but were then reinstated at the order of a federal judge last year showed up and voted in the 2016 presidential election. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted made that admission today in announcing his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of a lower court case that threw out the state’s voter registration maintenance process. “While partisan activists have asserted that up to 2 million voters had been wrongfully removed from the voter rolls, data from the 2016 Presidential Election returned only 7,500 ballots cast by those removed after election officials were not able to contact them,” Mr. Husted said in a news release from his office. Mr. Husted said he filed the appeal to justify the state’s ”accurate and up-to-date voter rolls.”

Arizona: State Election Director denies demanding voters be purged | Arizona Capitol Times

A top staffer at the Arizona Secretary of State denied accusations made by county recorders earlier this week that the office ordered voter registrations to be cancelled without proper documentation. In a letter delivered Jan. 23, the county recorders described their relationship with the Secretary of State’s office as “dire,” singling out “verbal abuse,” neglected duties and demands to cancel voters came without proper documentation. Secretary of State Michele Reagan asked for an internal accounting of the accusation that her office improperly sought to have some voters removed from the rolls.

Guam: Election commission to purge 5,318 inactive voters | The Guam Daily

The Guam Election Commission will begin removing inactive voters next month in line with public law, reducing current voter registration numbers of more than 51,000 down to about 46,000. Local law requires the cancellation of inactive voters’ registration after voters fail to participate in the two most recent general elections, in this case the 2014 and 2016 general elections. Guam Election Commission Executive Director Maria Pangelinan said there are approximately 5,318 names of voters on the current list that will be purged by Feb. 24.

New York: Justice Department Seeks to Join Suit Over 117,000 Purged Brooklyn Voters | The New York Times

The Justice Department announced on Thursday that it had filed a motion to join a lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections, alleging that the board’s Brooklyn office violated federal voter registration law by erasing more than 117,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls before the primary election simply because they had not voted in previous elections. The filing accused the board of failing to take several steps that are normally required before a voter’s name is removed, and also raised concerns about how the board oversaw the Brooklyn office’s handling of the voter rolls. The petition by the Justice Department to intervene in a lawsuit filed in November by Common Cause New York, a good-government organization, lends significant muscle to an effort to hold the agency responsible for a chaotic Primary Day in April, when many voters in Brooklyn were surprised and infuriated to learn that their voter registrations had been canceled.

New York: Primary Voter Purge Still Under Investigation Amid Calls For Reform | Observer

The Empire State is a Democratic Party stronghold and was a vital turning point in the primaries. Yet by the end of April, the New York Democratic primary had the second lowest voter turnout (19.7 percent) of all Democratic primaries, behind Louisiana. Though Hillary Clinton had a comfortable lead in pledged delegates, Sen. Bernie Sanders was experiencing a surge, winning the previous seven out of eight states. A potential win in New York could have proved to be a catalyst for Sanders’ comeback, but the foundation of the New York Democratic Party was not set up in his favor. The primary was constricted by rules that promoted voter suppression, coupled with issues that have yet to be explained or adequately addressed. Some 126,000 voters were inexplicably purged from voter rolls in Brooklyn during the Democratic primary. The New York Attorney General’s Office would not comment on the purge as it is still under investigation. Two election officials, Diane Haslett-Rudiano and Betty-Ann Canizio Aquil, were suspended in the wake of the controversy. But the purge was just one of many issues that arose during the primary, most of which occurred in the New York City area, where Clinton’s victory in the state primary was solidified.

Ohio: Secretary of State to appeal voter purging case to U.S. Supreme Court | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted will appeal a ruling that the state was improperly purging voters from its rolls, arguing that the process is important for election integrity. “The current status of this case leaves one of our most important election safeguards in limbo,” Husted said in a statement. “I will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse this unnecessary intrusion into our state’s elections process.” A. Philip Randolph Institute, the American Civil Liberties Union Ohio and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless sued Ohio, arguing that the state’s system for culling voter registration lists violated federal elections laws because it punished voters for inactivity. Elections boards weed out ineligible voters — those who have died or been found incompetent or convicted of felonies or who have moved from the voting jurisdiction. But Ohio’s process for years has also been triggered by lack of voting.

North Carolina: US judge tells North Carolina counties to restore purged voter names to polls | McClatchy DC

A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Friday that four counties must restore names to voter rolls that were part of a recent mass purge. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs came in response to a lawsuit filed Monday by the state NAACP. In the lawsuit, seeking an emergency halt to voter roll purges in Beaufort, Moore and Cumberland counties, NAACP representatives and several voters affected described the practice as an effort to suppress the African-American vote. At issue was whether the North Carolina law that allows individual voters in this state to challenge anyone’s registration violates the National Voter Registration Act, which “prohibits the mass removal of voters from the rolls within the 90 days prior to the election.” The organization also contends that county election boards did not follow proper notification or hearing procedures for the challenges. “[T]here is little question that the County Boards’ process of allowing third parties to challenge hundreds and, in Cumberland County, thousands of voters within 90 days before the 2016 General Election constitutes the type of ‘systematic’ removal prohibited by the [National Voter Registration Act],” Biggs wrote in her ruling.