What you need to know
- State and local officials routinely remove nonvoters from voting rolls.
- This brief shows how procedures for voter purges vary significantly across states.
- Everything Policy analysts also examine whether Republican-controlled states have different purge rates compared to Democrat-controlled or Swing states.
States routinely purge voter rolls in order to maintain accuracy in who is eligible to vote. Researchers from Everything Policy dug into the data to see who is purged, why they were purged, and how frequently purges happen. Are there differences across states based on the political affiliation of election officials?
What is a voter purge?
Under the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), states are required to remove a voter from its rolls if the person has died, moved, or has not voted in two consecutive federal elections, and fails to respond to mailings asking for confirmation that they wish to remain registered. Additionally, states can remove people from their rolls if the person is determined to not be a citizen, and some states also remove convicted felons and people deemed mentally incompetent.
States differ in how frequently or aggressively they engage in voter roll purges. In New Hampshire, for example, removal based on inactivity occurs every ten years, while many states conduct purges every two years. According to the most recent survey by the United States Election Assistance Commission, an independent, bipartisan commission whose mission is to help election officials improve the administration of elections and help Americans participate in the voting process, 19,270,301 voters were purged from voter rolls of 48 states and DC between elections in 2020 and 2022.
Who enforces voter purges?
In 38 states, the Secretary of State directs voter purges, though it is often up to local county or municipal election officials to actually carry out list maintenance. In the remaining 12 states, election roll integrity is the responsibility of a board or independent commission.
Federal courts are frequently invoked to ensure compliance with the NVRA’s terms, both for and against purges. In New York City, for example, the right-leaning Judicial Watch sued the city in 2022 for a failure to purge voter rolls, noting that only 22 people had been removed over the previous 6 years for inactivity in voting in federal elections. As part of the settlement, New York City agreed to remove 441,083 ineligible names out of approximately 5.5 million voters and promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter rolls. In October 2024, the Alabama Secretary of State was sued by the left-leaning Campaign Legal Center to stop an ongoing purge of its voter rolls within 90 days of the Presidential election, which is prohibited by the NVRA. A federal judge halted the purge of voter rolls, restoring active registration status for thousands of American-born and naturalized citizens, which would have otherwise made them not eligible to vote.
Are there partisan differences in purges?
In order to determine the proportion of purged voters to the total eligible voter population in each state, Everything Policy collected data on each state’s Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) and compared the total number of voters removed from voter rolls to its CVAP, as shown in the figure below. States are divided based on the partisanship of their Secretary of State (Republican or Democrat). States where the process is directed by an independent commission are labeled as Non-partisan. Each bar shows the average percentage purged for the states in the three groups.
There is no sign of partisan differences – the averages for the three groups are nearly the same.
Next, because voters are purged for various reasons, we look at the percentage purged for reasons other than “death” or “ moved” – in other words, all discretionary reasons for removal from failure to respond to a mailer asking to confirm registration status to felony conviction. The chart below shows the percentage of voters removed for these ‘other’ reasons compared to the total number purged across the three groups
Here again, there are no signs of significant partisan differences.
The Take-Away
Voter purges are a regular part of maintaining voter registration lists and are required by federal law.
While purge procedures differ across states, there is no sign of significant partisan differences in either the percentage of voters purged or the percentage of voters purged for reasons other than death or moving out of state.
There are also no significant differences between purge procedures administered by Secretaries of State elected as partisans compared to nonpartisan commissions.
Further reading
Sadler, R. C., Wojciechowski, T. W., & Hayes, E. (2024). Spatial and statistical predictors of voter purge rates in Michigan. Social Science Quarterly 105: 1791-1805
Feder, C., & Miller, M. G. (2020). Voter purges after Shelby: Part of special symposium on election sciences. American Politics Research, 48(6), 687-692.
Sources
What is a voter purge?
US Election Assistance Commission. 2024. Studies and Reports. https://tinyurl.com/yckpcv8d, accessed 10/9/24.
Who enforces voter purges?
Judicial Watch. 2022. Judicial Watch Sues after New York City Fails to Clean Voter Rolls for Years. https://tinyurl.com/ywzhmfvs, accessed 10/17/24.
U.S. Election Assistance Commission. 2022. Election Administration and Voting Survey 2022. https://tinyurl.com/zbj768sx, accessed 10/10/24.
Wang, Hansi Lo. 2024. A federal judge has ordered Alabama to stop trying to purge voters before Election Day. National Public Radio. https://tinyurl.com/yjbdw3xn, accessed 10/16/24.
Are there partisan differences in purges?
Ballotpedia. 2024. List of Current Secretaries of State. https://tinyurl.com/398am5th, accessed 10/15/24.
U.S. Election Assistance Commission. 2022. Election Administration and Voting Survey 2022. https://tinyurl.com/zbj768sx, accessed 10/10/24.
Contributors
John Arnold (Intern) Is a sophomore at Binghamton University majoring in Political Science and Economics
Dr. Robert Holahan (Content Lead) is Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty-in-Residence of the Dickinson Research Team (DiRT) at Binghamton University (SUNY). He holds a PhD in Political Science in 2011 from Indiana University-Bloomington, where his advisor was Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom.
Dr. William Bianco (Research Director) received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Rochester. He is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Indiana Political Analytics Workshop at Indiana University. His current research is on representation, political identities, and the politics of scientific research.
