A recent controversy between the state of Texas and individual counties in the state has emerged over whether the state can force counties to purge voter registration rolls of the names of people who may be dead, or have moved out of the county.
Counties - especially large ones - are concerned that doing so this close to an election might result in legitimate voters being removed from the rolls - and open themselves up to whatever legal consequences follow. They prefer doing this after the election, but the state in insisting they go forward now.
Here are a few stories related to this. It a good potential future written assignment for GOVT 2306.
- NPR: Many Texans Bereaved Over "Dead" Voter Purge: In Houston, high school nurse Terry Collins got a letter informing
her that after 34 years of voting she was off the Harris County rolls.
Sorry. "Friday of last week, I got a letter
saying that my voting registration would be revoked because I'm
deceased, I'm dead. I was like, 'Oh, no I'm not!' " Collins says. In
order to stay on the rolls, the 52-year-old nurse had to call and
inform the registrar of her status among the living. She tried, but it
didn't go so well. "When I tried to call I
was on hold for an hour, never got anyone," she says. "I called three
days in a row and was on hold for an hour or more."
- HC: Harris County cancels 'dead' voter purge: Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Don Sumners said Monday that he
would not purge from the voter roll before the November election any of
the 9,018 citizens who received letters from his office in recent days
notifying them that they may be dead and are at risk of having their
registrations canceled.
However, a spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, the office
that generated the statewide list of about 80,000 voters, said Sumners'
move contradicts legislative directives.
"Our office has federal and state requirements to maintain an
accurate and secure voter registration list. If any of those people are
deceased, the law requires that they be removed from the voter
registration list ," Rich Parsons said. "Mr. Sumners' decision would
prevent that."
- HC: Who's afraid of zombie voters?: Voter purges are a common event, but usually not this controversial.
The difference? In the search for ghost voters, Texas has replaced a
scalpel with a proton pack. Changes to the system have turned a
reasonable process into a broad swipe that risks kicking out proper
voters and undermining the legitimacy of our elections.
While the state previously used data from the Bureau of Vital Statistics, a bill passed last year now requires it to use data from the Social Security Administration.
This new list appears to be less accurate, perhaps explaining why
people who had been voting for years suddenly found notices of their own
ineligibility in their mailboxes.
And rather than taking the burden on itself to check whether the
information was accurate, the Texas Secretary of State's office mailed
out notices for both strong and weak matches, and burdened citizens with
sorting it out. Sending an unverified mass mailing that asks people to
confirm their own deaths seems an inefficient and risky way of
maintaining voter rolls, especially so close to a major election. And
given the problems with voter registration in Harris County over the
past few years, and the continuing debate over the discriminatory effect
of statewide voter ID laws, we would hope that Texas would be more
careful not to risk disenfranchising voters.
- Businessweek: Texas Court Halts Attempt to Purge Voters as Dead: Texas officials were temporarily
barred by a state judge from ordering county election officials
to purge presumably dead voters from registration rolls because
the initiative may violate the election code.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed yesterday by four Texas
voters who were told they would be purged from voter-
registration lists as deceased. They asked state court Judge Tim
Sulak in Austin to stop the state from striking about 77,000
names from the rolls, arguing the plan violates the Texas
election code and the U.S. Voting Rights Act.
The secretary of state is “restrained from further
instructing the counties to remove any other names from the
voter rolls,” Sulak said in his order. “Plaintiffs are
entitled to temporary injunctive relief.”
Lawyers for the voters contended the state was required to
get pre-approval for rules changes under the federal Voting
Rights Act. The law mandates that Texas and other jurisdictions
subject to the act get pre-clearance from the U.S. Justice
Department or a special three-judge panel to alter electoral
procedures.
“There is no statutory authority for this purge,” civil
rights lawyer David Richards, who represents the plaintiffs,
said in a phone interview while waiting for the judge to rule.
