Of course, it was implied that I meant before the ballots were “live”, but you knew that.
I’ll believe that these ballot errors were honest mistakes when I believe that people who can pronounce “Marjorie” but cannot pronounce “Kamala” are making an honest mistake. Three syllables, emphasis on the first… one of the names sure is tricky for some reason.
(And it’s not the name with all the fancy letters! Such a mystery!)
And our talking about them creates distrust in the system, which the Republicans desperately desire.
This article refers to the 2020 election but illustrates the point:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said former President Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters.
Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton’s office.
Can’t say I am surprised:
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections has removed 747,000 people from its list of registered voters within the last 20 months, officials announced Thursday in a press release.
The State Board of Elections in the release said the majority of those stripped from the rolls were deemed ineligible to be registered because they had moved within the state and did not register their new address, or because they did not participate in the past two federal elections, prompting an inactive status.
Nor am I, considering that 5 years ago (before the 2020 election) the documentary Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook showed people in real time getting people stricken from voting rolls on spurious reasons. You can watch the documentary here if you’re curious, it is terrifying and fascinating, and narrated by Jeffrey Wright.
But yeah, they were pulling the same crap even then. It’s just how they do voting there.
Do those removed get told they’re removed, with an opportunity to appeal - or am I being naive?
From what I understand, you don’t know that you have been removed until you ask the proper government agency.
Or find out when you go to try and vote.
Exactly my thoughts. Even if these typos and the like are honest clerical errors, that is surely a purpose of the other types of shenanigans documented in this thread.
As for NC’s voter purge, wow. Why “inactive” should imply “ineligible” is beyond me. (I was just reminding my students yesterday that they must re-register if they change address, even within the same city. I’m not in NC, but rather another swinger: WI.)
Here in Maryland “Inactive” voters need only provide proof of residency at the polling place to be able to vote.
Last month Texas governor Abbott gleefully posted that over 1 million people have been removed from the state’s voter rolls.
Turns out that 457k of those folks are dead, and another 463k are on the suspense list, which means they probably moved but haven’t updated their addresses. These people may still be on the rolls, in spite of what the governor proclaimed.
This appears to be SOP in Texas, but as UT professor Bethany Albertson says “It’s not typical to advertise that you’re doing it”.
I understand voter rolls need to be maintained and cleaned up although these states seem overly aggressive in deciding who gets removed from the list.
The bigger issue, to me, is why can’t they have done this six months ago so anyone removed in error has a chance to fix the problem? (we know why)
According to the article I linked, the numbers from Texas are the numbers since 2021.
Hopefully most of those placed ‘on suspense’ have re-registered with their new address.
Here are a couple of articles talking about how Republicans in North Carolina were trying to illegally purge voters from the rolls.
Raleigh News & Observer: Fact-checking GOP voter registration lawsuits in NC
But, you know, it’s important that rolls be purged of people who have passed away or moved, and this is all just an impartial process that applies to everyone equally, right?
In 2021, during the last list maintenance cycle, over 391,000 North Carolina voters were removed from the rolls. In 2019, over 576,000 were removed. And over 400,000 registered NC voters have already been removed or put on notice of removal this year.
- Black registered voters were more likely to be removed than other demographic groups.
- Multiracial voters, Indigenous voters, and Hispanic voters were also over-represented in the removals.
- Younger adults were particularly impacted by 2021 voter roll removals: while voters aged 26-40 represent only a quarter of North Carolina voters, they represented nearly half (46%) of voters removed from the rolls in 2021.
Nope.
GOP theory is that the less people vote, the better chance they have of winning.
Note they like to do this just BEFORE and election.
(Gomer Pyle)“Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!”
And then the folks who removed you without telling you will cry “Invalid voter trying to vote! See, voter fraud!”.
Yeah. Presumably the person they removed is dead or moved away or something. How are they supposed to let them know? Surely they never remove anyone who should not be removed. /s
“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” - David Frum: Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic
I’ve heard that the DoJ has people ready for all kinds of shenanigans like this. I just hope they can move quickly enough.