In this presidential election year, the question is whether we have made improvements to our election system to ensure an honest and clean election.
One way to measure this is to examine a state’s voter rolls. Accurate voter rolls are essential to clean elections. Each error on the voter roll presents an opportunity for fraud and abuse. This is a risk in states that automatically mail ballots to every active registered voter.
Unfortunately, many states fail to remove deceased registrants, improper commercial addresses, and duplicate voter registrations. Don’t take my word for it. The data paints a dark picture.
Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, is fighting in federal court to keep the names of more than 25,000 deceased registrants on the voter roll. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which brought the lawsuit, has provided Benson with photos of tombstones and obituaries of many of these registrants.
The majority of these registrants passed away more than a decade ago. It is not reasonable for someone to remain on the voter roll for five federal elections after their death. Benson should be working to remove these registrants instead of fighting to keep the dead on Michigan’s voter roll.
But it is not just Michigan that is missing the mark.
Another state, Nevada, is full of problems. In 2020, ballots in Nevada were found blowing on the side of the road. If Nevada election officials do not get their act together, that may happen again. Nevada contains hundreds of questionable commercial addresses on the voter roll where it does not appear someone could be living.
These addresses include a Taco Bell, the Las Vegas airport, casinos, vacant lots, bars, the Larry Flint Hustler Club, parking lots, 7-Elevens and a wedding chapel.
Making matters worse, Nevada is an automatic vote-by-mail state, meaning every active registrant on the voter roll automatically receives a ballot in the mail. So, the vacant lots, casinos and 7-Elevens will receive mail ballots in 2024.
These commercial addresses must be investigated and fixed by election officials before 2024 ballots hit the mail.
The news isn’t all bad. Some states have made improvements since 2020. Pennsylvania signed a settlement agreement with the Public Interest Legal Foundation to remove the names of more than 20,000 deceased registrants from the commonwealth’s voter roll.
In 2021, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that his office had removed the names of 18,000 registrants who had passed away. In March, the New Hampshire Senate passed a bill requiring the executor of a will to notify a local election clerk of the death. This passed along party lines.
Many are ideologically opposed to cleaning voter rolls. Not only does this hurt the integrity of our elections, but it also violates federal law. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, states are required to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
We need to clean up America’s voter rolls before the 2024 election. It is not too late to stop mistakes from repeating themselves.
J. Christian Adams is the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
