BY THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE | DEMOCRACY DOCKET | BIGTENTUSA
🛝 State of play: The use of targeting voter rolls to urge election officials to purge voter registrations is becoming much more common place. Calling themselves election investigators, these private eyes have pressed officials in Michigan, Nevada and Georgia to drop voters from the rolls en masse, sometimes numbering 1,000 at a time. But in fact they are challenging legitimate registrations, and seeking to weed the voter rolls of citizens they simply don’t like. Additionally, this strategy burdens election officials, knee deep in so they don’t have time to do the real work of election protection. Read More
⭐Why does this matter: There’s new evidence that abusive mass voter purges will be a major weapon in the political battles of the coming months, and into the November election. Goal: instead of empowering Americans to vote – voters are losing their right to vote. In fact, just looking at Georgia as an example, in 2019, Georgia’s Secretary of State Raffensperger purged 309,000 individuals — 4% of all Georgia voters. Two years later, in 2021, his office purged another 100,000 voters. An additional 92,000 Georgia voter registrations were challenged last year.
🕵️But who are these election investigators: Not surprisingly, they include Cleta Mitchell and Mike Lindell of mattress fame. They include an expansive web of grass-roots groups that formed after former President Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in 2020. These groups have made mass voter challenges a top priority this election year, spurred on by True the Vote, a vote-monitoring group with a long history of spreading misinformation. Read More
🏎️ Zoom Out: Of course there is a tested way to keep the voter rolls updated nationwide: the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. States use this nonpartisan information-sharing organization to reduce error in maintaining their rolls. However, a right-wing vigilante group called EagleAI has launched to search for fraud. As the Brennan Center for Justice has documented, it’s poorly designed to catch real wrongdoing — but it is a tool for disenfranchisement.
✍️ What can we do:
📍We need to educate ourselves, our friends and family about our rights and the importance of regularly updating our voter registration information.
📍Subscribe to the Democracy Docket newsletter to learn about what is happening in the most vulnerable states
📍Hold Voter Registration Drives, especially in communities that are frequently targeted by purges.
📍Check out the work of three partners who are champions fight against voter suppression. The Brennan Center for Justice; Fair Fight Action and VoteRiders: these organizations stand firm on the side of voting rights.
📍Finally- everyone needs to get voting reminders: Got to BigTentVote✔️ link or (our QR Code below), and then share it with family (especially our young adult children) and our friends.
