Tuesday marks National Voter Registration Day, with the goal of registering tens of thousands of potential voters to vote. All eligible adults should register to vote. People are lucky that we live in a republic in which we are each given a chance to have our voice heard at the ballot box.
Many people across the globe do not have that opportunity. But National Voter Registration Day also provides an opportunity to advocate accurate and up-to-date voter rolls. A state’s voter roll is the most important election integrity document. It tells election officials who is eligible to vote.
A voter roll is especially important in states that have automatic mail voting, meaning that ballots are mailed to every person on the voter roll. If the voter roll contains an incorrect address, the ballot might not reach the intended voter. According to federal data, 1.1 million mail ballots were undeliverable in the 2020 election. Think about that — 1.1 million ballots went to the wrong address. There is a larger problem beyond bad addresses on voter rolls.
In 2020, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which I am president, released a report that analyzed the voter rolls in 42 states. What we found was deeply troubling. Many secretaries of state are failing to remove people who have died from their voter rolls. Nearly 350,000 deceased registrants remained on the voter rolls. Each of these deceased registrants left on the voter roll represents an opportunity for fraud.
Keeping voter rolls free from long-dead registrants is required by federal law. The foundation utilized these data and brought action against election officials who were not doing their job and removing these long-deceased people. Pennsylvania settled one of our lawsuits and agreed to remove over 20,000 deceased registrants from their voter rolls. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is still in litigation with us for failing to remove nearly 26,000 deceased registrants from the voter roll. Last month, the court gave us a preliminary victory by denying her motion to dismiss the case.
Another voter list maintenance issue is duplicate registrants. A duplicate registration happens when one person is registered to vote more than once from the same address. In Pennsylvania, we even uncovered a person who was registered to vote seven times. In 2018, over 37,000 registrants were credited with having a second ballot that was cast.
Removing deceased and duplicate registrants from the voter roll reduces opportunities for election crimes. Accurate voter rolls give voters confidence in their elections. It also saves time, money, and postage for election officials and candidates who don’t have to contact the same people more than once.
As part of National Voter Registration Day, election officials in every state should keep accurate voter rolls and use all the tools available to them to keep up-to-date voter rolls.
J. Christian Adams is the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a former Justice Department attorney, and current commissioner on the United States Commission for Civil Rights.
