States are kicking a growing number of voters off their rolls in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act.
The rate of voter purges — a sometimes faulty process that states use to clean their voter rolls — is significantly higher than it was a decade ago, according to a new report from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.
This increase coincides with a 2013 Supreme Court decision, which struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act that required nine states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval when altering their election laws.
The spike is notable. Between 2006 and 2008, 12 million voters were purged from voter rolls. Between 2014 and 2016, that number rose to 16 million — a roughly 33 percent increase.
Brennan Center researchers also found a major surge in voter purges in the places that had previously been subject to federal preclearance under the Voting Rights Act. Several states — including Alabama, Virginia, and South Carolina — with a history of racial discrimination in their voting laws had been required to run changes in such policies by the Justice Department, a practice known as federal preclearance.
...
As the researchers point out, voter purging is an important process that helps states and counties maintain up-to-date voter rolls by canceling registrations for voters who are no longer eligible, including those who have moved or died. When conducted improperly, however, it can disenfranchise voters who are removed in error and not notified until it’s too late to ameliorate the problem.
That’s not just a hypothetical scenario. In Arkansas, thousands of voters were erroneously flagged in 2016 as the state sought to cull voters who had been convicted of felonies. In Virginia, voters were wrongly deleted from the rolls in 2013 based on a flawed database that tracked residents who had moved.