Albany, NY – New York is wrongly purging voter rolls to remove the names of supposedly inactive voters, a group that advocates for good government said Wednesday in a lawsuit against New York state election officials.
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The federal lawsuit argues the state’s purging policy violates federal law governing how states may remove names from their list of registered voters.
“New York’s outdated policies disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters in clear violation of the National Voter Registration Act,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the good government group Common Cause-New York.
The state’s aggressive purging policy was highlighted in last year’s elections, when tens of thousands of names were purged from voter rolls in Brooklyn, prompting widespread complaints from voters forced to cast affidavit ballots.
Officials routinely remove names of voters who they believe may have moved or died. As a result, people who haven’t voted in several years might not receive a regular ballot. Supporters of an aggressive approach say it helps keep voter rolls current while preventing people from committing voter fraud by ensuing only legal, registered voters cast a ballot.
A spokesman for the state’s Board of Elections did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.
Federal law says states may remove a voter’s name from the rolls only if the voter writes to indicate that they have moved, or if the voter fails to respond to a letter seeking confirmation of their residency — and then fails to vote in two consecutive general national elections.
According to the lawsuit, however, New York determines that a voter is “inactive” if the voter doesn’t reply to a notice seeking confirmation of residency. Some voters in Brooklyn were reportedly denied regular ballots because they hadn’t voted since 2008 and took longer than 14 days to respond to a cancellation notice.
The Lawyers’ Committee is joined in the lawsuit by the group LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the law firm of Dechert LLP.
Really hard to follow the argument.
> Federal law says states may remove a voter’s name from the rolls only if … the voter fails to respond to a letter seeking confirmation of their residency — and then fails to vote in two consecutive general national elections.
The complaint is that:
> Some voters in Brooklyn were reportedly denied regular ballots because they hadn’t voted since 2008 and took longer than 14 days to respond to a cancellation notice.
One supposes “denied regular ballots” refers to the 2016 election. From 2008 to 2016 seems like 2 consecutive elections before 2016 (2008 and 2012). So what do they want? A 15-day grace period to reply to the cancellation notice?