Current Events > Trump administration stirs alarm over voter purges

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/trump-administration-stirs-alarm-over-voter-purges-n789706

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.

The rolls are messy, due to deaths as well as those who move between states and neglect to unregister from their past place of residence. Both sides of the debate say something should be done to ensure greater accuracy.

But voting rights advocates have expressed increased anxiety over how some states, like Ohio, have aggressively pruned their voter rolls in the name of preventing widespread, yet still unproven, voter fraud. Those advocates say voter purges require a surgeon’s scalpel and argue that aggressive purges suppress mostly minority and Democratic votes.

Thanks to President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission and a Justice Department memo signaling his administration’s desire to take action on voter roll maintenance, they fear even more eligible voters will be at risk.

In June, the DOJ alarmed advocates by sending a letter to 44 states — those covered by the National Voter Registration Act, which the Justice Department enforces — asking for details on their purge processes.

"This is a prelude to setting up voter purging," said Vanita Gupta, who during the Obama administration was head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, which houses voting rights enforcement.

Still, conservatives say messy voter rolls create opportunities for fraud.

"The threat is, at least in considerable part, voter fraud," said Bob Popper, a senior attorney and director of the Election Integrity Project at Judicial Watch, a conservative group that sued to insist on Ohio’s voter purge process.

The president has said the messy voter rolls are a sign of fraud, and must be investigated.
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There’s no way of knowing exactly how many people have been erroneously removed from records across the nation.

Purges are done by countless officials at the state and local level. There’s no standardized way of keeping records and almost no way of telling eligible voters who are purged improperly from appropriate cuts. Wrongful purges are often not known until eligible voters are turned away at the polls, as Harmon was at his local high school when he tried to vote on a local marijuana referendum.

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Voter suppression is fine until it happens to me!
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Those advocates say voter purges require a surgeon’s scalpel and argue that aggressive purges suppress mostly minority and Democratic votes.

We're going to need proof of actual malice, or at the very least something more significant than mere correlation.

Questionmarktarius posted...

We're going to need proof of actual malice,

I'm not sure intent is the issue when people are wrongfully purged from registration; it's bad, full stop.
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Antifar posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

We're going to need proof of actual malice,

I'm not sure intent is the issue when people are wrongfully purged from registration; it's bad, full stop.

But:

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.

We're already pushing hard on registration at the DMV. "Oh by the way, you should re-register to vote" doesn't seem to be too unreasonable to tack onto renewing license plates.

Weird how Trump is making people care about Voter purges since that problem pretty much defined the Democratic primaries in 2016, amongst other shenanigans.
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Bloodychess posted...

Weird how Trump is making people care about Voter purges since that problem pretty much defined the Democratic primaries in 2016, amongst other shenanigans.

Hi, let me introduce you to me.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Antifar posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

We're going to need proof of actual malice,

I'm not sure intent is the issue when people are wrongfully purged from registration; it's bad, full stop.

But:

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.

We're already pushing hard on registration at the DMV. "Oh by the way, you should re-register to vote" doesn't seem to be too unreasonable to tack onto renewing license plates.

Doesn't do anything to fix the situation outlined.
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P4wn4g3 posted...

Doesn't do anything to fix the situation outlined.

The "situation outlined" is that election officials at various levels are assuming that someone who hasn't voted in a while, and hasn't replied to official mail asking about it, is either dead or relocated.

The person in the article was serving in the military. I mean maybe we don't need vets voting, we'd have less conservatives in politics that way. Not very ethical though.
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P4wn4g3 posted...

The person in the article was serving in the military.

60, and "served".

People are being taken out voting rolls for various reasons in various jurisdictions, and we need to decide if it's a good idea or not. Trotting out a veteran to complain about it is simultaneously hyperbole and distraction.

Well I'd also say that we don't need senile old conservatives voting at all, but again that's unethical.
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Roles need purged of dead people, those no longer living in state, etc. I can't see why anyone would oppose this. What was posted in OP uses an anecdotal account, a lot of assumptions, and I doubt this is very widespread.

Also this:

Voter purges — what election officials call the removal of outdated registrations — have existed as long as elections have, and are required by federal law.

Funny how it's an issue to the left now.
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It's an issue to Trump, not to the left. Voting offices everywhere are otherwise responsible for the administration of all of this.
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Gojak_v3 posted...

Funny how it's an issue to the left now.

Maternalistic racism has served the left very well over the years, to the point that it's inventing entirely new "races" nowadays.

Equal opportunities crap is nonsequiter here.
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Why dont we just nix the whole concept of voter registration or have election day registration
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Gojak_v3 posted...

Funny how it's an issue to the left now.

Maternalistic racism has served the left very well over the years, to the point that it's inventing entirely new "races" nowadays.

Funny here I thought racism had served the right, it got the birther in chief elected president after all
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Questionmarktarius posted...

We're going to need proof of actual malice, or at the very least something more significant than mere correlation.

You just have people in Ohio saying shit like this.

I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine. Let’s be fair and reasonable.

https://thinkprogress.org/ohio-gop-election-board-member-our-voting-process-shouldnt-accommodate-black-voters-856b4e7deee0/
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Malcolm_Caradoc posted...

Why dont we just nix the whole concept of voter registration or have election day registration

Do you really want to make the lines even longer, when everyone has to bring a birth certificate and water bill along?

Malcolm_Caradoc posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Gojak_v3 posted...

Funny how it's an issue to the left now.

Maternalistic racism has served the left very well over the years, to the point that it's inventing entirely new "races" nowadays.

Funny here I thought racism had served the right, it got the birther in chief elected president after all

It does, but again it's nonsequiter which is why I didn't touch their stupid thought bubble.
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Yeah every legal citizen should just automatically be registered to vote and only be taken off if they become a felon, move out of country, etc.

Malcolm_Caradoc posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Gojak_v3 posted...

Funny how it's an issue to the left now.

Maternalistic racism has served the left very well over the years, to the point that it's inventing entirely new "races" nowadays.

Funny here I thought racism had served the right, it got the birther in chief elected president after all

That's paternalistic racism.

I mean there were MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL VOTES FOR HILLARY!!!!!!!!!!!!
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