Georgia cleans up voter rolls
The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office is canceling some voter registrations. It is an effort, they say, to clean up the voter rolls.
Fox – 5 Atlanta
Are you registered to vote in Florida?
Are you sure?
Every U.S. state but one has some method in place to maintain its list of registered voters, called voter rolls (North Dakota doesn’t require voter registration). Voter rolls are updated on a regular basis to make sure that everyone who is registered to vote is actually eligible to vote.
But in some GOP-led states, aggressive moves to purge voter rolls have led to eligible voters suddenly discovering they can’t vote and scrambling to get their statuses restored, in some cases large numbers of eligible voters. Since the 2020 election, 13 states have passed laws to expand voter purges, including Georgia, where a new law allowing anyone to challenge anyone else’s registration has resulted in hundreds of thousands of challenges by only a few conservative activists.
How do I check my voter registration in Florida?
You can make sure you’re still registered and all the information is correct by going here. You should do this every year well in time to address it before any voting deadlines. The deadline to register or update your register information in time for the Nov. 5 general election is Monday, Oct. 7.
Why are accurate voting rolls important?
Voter rolls are constantly changing. New voters register, registered voters move or change their information, some voters may become ineligible due to felony convictions, some voters may become eligible if they become naturalized, and some voters pass away.
It is vitally important to maintain an accurate list of registered voters in a given jurisdiction to ensure that all of the information is up to date and people who aren’t eligible to vote aren’t allowed to.
Voting rolls also help election boards plan and budget for upcoming elections, apportion polling places and voting machines, and provide mailing lists for direct voter contact when needed.
How does Florida maintain voter rolls?
Florida Statutes allow the following methods to check voter rolls accuracy at least every other year:
Checking U.S. Postal Service change-of-address formsSending out confirmation mailers to all registered voters who have not voted or updated their registration records in the past two general electionsSending out confirmation mailers to all registered voters to see which ones come back as undeliverable
Voters who don’t respond to the mailer within 30 days are sent a final notice, and failure to respond to that results in an “inactive” status. If an inactive voter doesn’t vote or update their information after two general elections, their name is removed from the voter rolls by the end of the year.
Will voting be harder this year? Drop box changes, what else to know about 2024 Florida elections
What is voter purging?
Voter purging is the practice of removing registered voters from the state’s voter registration database. Voters may be removed because their status was changed to inactive and it was not corrected, or because they were active but were found to be ineligible to vote.
“Voter purging” is often used to describe state policies and programs that sweep up and remove valid voters from the rolls through over-zealous actions or inaccurate methods used to weed out ineligible voters or non-citizens. Critics claim that the intention behind aggressive voter purging is to suppress or prevent voting from eligible voters who oppose the party in power, particularly voters of color.
How often are voter rolls updated in Florida?
Voter rolls are updated anytime anyone makes a change to their voter registration.
Florida Statutes also require supervisors of elections to conduct comprehensive annual list maintenance at least once each year beginning no later than April 1. It must be completed 90 days before the date of any federal election.
What does it mean if your Florida voter registration status is ‘inactive’?
If there is some reason the state or your county Supervisor of Elections believes that your address or eligibility has changed, they will send confirmation mailers to your last registered address. Failure to respond will result in “inactive” status.
Legal residents who are registered to vote but considered to be inactive may still vote, and doing so will change your status back to active. But you will not receive reminders to vote, sample ballots or any other mass mailings from your county’s Supervisor of Elections. That can make voters who are marked inactive, whether they know it or not, less likely to participate in an election.
If you do not vote or update your voter registration information within two general election cycles, you will be changed to inactive and removed from the rolls by the end of the year. If you wish to vote, you will have to re-register.
Voter purges: Here’s how you could end up on Florida’s ‘inactive’ voter list — even if you’ve voted recently
Why would someone be removed from Florida voter registration rolls?
There are several reasons why someone would be removed from Florida’s voter rolls.
The voter has diedThe voter has moved out of stateThe voter was convicted of a felony and has not yet completed the sentence, paid any outstanding fines and restored their voting rightsThe voter was adjudicated mentally incapacitatedThe voter was not a U.S. citizenThe voter is not at least 18 years oldThe voter is registered at an address that is not their legal resident addressThe voter has requested to be removedWhat is the Electronic Registration Information Center? Does Florida use ERIC?
In 2020, Florida started participating in a multi-state voter registration database called the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which was designed to make it easier for states to identify voters who have moved, died or have outdated registration information.
However, by 2023 Florida and several other GOP-led states left the program, citing security concerns and unfounded accusations of “potential partisan leanings.” The comments come after more than a year of false claims by far-right critics, including former President Donald Trump and other election conspiracists, that ERIC data was being used to help liberal groups.
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Publish date : 2024-09-04 07:42:00
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