Thousands Of Ineligible Voters Are Still Registered by Thomas Hargrove

Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.

Note: Such findings as these were in part responsible for the provision in HAVA that states would develop statewide voter registration databases. Would anyone who believes the 50 states will develop working databases substantially better than the counties are already doing please contact the EJF about the special we have on a bridge.

December 14, 2000 —Official registration lists in the United States have become so faulty that scores of counties claim to have more voters than actual adult population.

Sloppy bookkeeping led 190 counties and the state of Maine to appear to be more than 100 percent registered in the 1996 presidential election, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study of election records in 3,189 counties and voting districts.

The study found that at least 167,968 people in these areas were still eligible to cast ballots even though they had died or moved away.

Maine had 1,001,292 eligible voters even though census estimates pegged the voting-age population at no more than 945,000. That means Maine was 106 percent registered four years ago.

"That was not a good thing," said Rebecca Wyke, Maine's assistant secretary of state.

The quality of America's voter rolls is deteriorating. Easier sign-up provisions under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and overworked or incompetent election supervisors have contributed to often grossly inaccurate lists sent to the local polling places to determine who should vote.

"This is an accident waiting to happen," said Curtis Gans, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. "The problem is real and could pose a danger in that people can vote in the names of those who have died or moved away. We must create a better standard for cleaning the lists."

Election officials in Maine were able to reduce their voter rolls to 882,337 by June of this year, still giving the state one of America's highest registration rates at 93 percent. Meanwhile, Alaska's lists deteriorated to the point that by October of this year the state was 108 percent registered.

"I'm very happy to pass this honor over to Alaska," Wyke said. "Our problems really were based in Maine law not requiring any kind of systematic purging of the voter rolls."

The federal registration act — often called the Motor Voter Bill since it authorized citizens to register while applying for drivers licenses — provided a mechanism to remove apparently inactive voters. But many local election supervisors are overwhelmed by the task of regularly preparing lists of voters who have not cast ballots in recent elections.

Maine and Alaska apparently are the first states — at least in modern times — to report more voters than eligible population. But the inaccuracies are even more apparent at the local level.

The most over-registered county, according to the Scripps Howard study, is rural Issaguena County in west-central Mississippi. The county had 1,669 registered voters four years ago, even though census estimates put the adult population at only 1,102 people, making the county 151 percent registered.

"Yes, I've been told that," said Circuit Clerk Erline Fortner who oversees the voter rolls. "But I've never looked into this to analyze it. I just don't have the time to do that. I know some people who have family here but no longer live here do come back to vote. But I don't know if that could account for such a large number."

Mississippi and Michigan are tied for having the largest number of counties with impossibly bloated voter lists. Each has 28 counties that report more than 100 percent registration rates.

Michigan's Iosco County on the shores of Lake Huron had 22,901 registered voters four years ago, even though population projects indicate no more than 16,779 residents are of voting age.

"A lot of those are military people who have to be maintained on our list," said Iosco County Clerk Michael Welsch. "We just can't purge them from the system. Under the law, they can maintain their residence wherever they want to."

The rolls became wildly inaccurate following the 1992 closure of Wurtsmith Air Force Base, which cost the county about 8,000 adults.

"Once they register to vote or get a drivers' license in any other state, in a perfect world either act is supposed to change their voter registration. But that certainly doesn't always happen," Welsch said.

Twenty-seven states had counties with bloated lists, including Texas with 23, Missouri with 19, Maine with 15, Kentucky with 12, Nebraska with 10, South Dakota with seven, Colorado with six and Illinois and Idaho with five each.

Election experts agree that any county with an apparent voter registration rate of 90 percent or greater almost certainly has ineligible voters on their rolls. (In 1996 the national registration rate was 74.6 percent, or 146.5 million registered voters out of a voting-age population of 196.5 million.)

This means there are at least 681 counties and voting districts with suspiciously large voter rolls.

"A bad list can cover up any sort of fraud that could be going on," said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, which advises election supervisors nationwide. His group assembled the data used in the Scripps Howard study. "And a bad list can be indicative of sloppy procedures."

Contact Thomas Hargrove at HargroveT@shns.com of Scripps Howard News Service.

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Last modified 6/14/09