2024 Prep - Cleaning Voter Rolls
Citizen groups try to pitch in and get vilified by media. Plus updates from NV, NC and around the country.
Voter rolls require constant maintenance in order to stay current. It is a daunting task because people are constantly moving, changing their names, or becoming ineligible.
In Idaho, statute really only requires monthly removal of deceased voters, and then after a general election, anyone who hasn’t voted in four years is removed.
Our rolls in Idaho are probably better than most states, but the above approach can still leave people who have moved out of state on the rolls for up to four years. While we have not found significant fraud in Idaho with manipulation of the voter rolls, there are several other states (AZ, CO, PA, IN, MT, et al) that have door knocked in the wake of the 2020 election and found substantial irregularities.
Idaho should learn from what is happening in other states and review our procedures to do everything we can so that something similar does not happen here. So, what can be done to secure our voter rolls here in Idaho?
I wrote before about pressing for these voter roll systems to provide a transaction report so that researchers can more easily see what changes were made, who made them, and why. In the absence of such a report, a few citizen groups across the country have developed software to pull in voter rolls on a periodic basis then run queries and reports to check for irregularities from one roll to the next. For example, a spike of new registrations might trigger an alert. Or perhaps a large number of changes in a given county might be of interest. Whatever the case may be, an analysis of the voter rolls from one month to the next is one tool that can be used to check that nothing untoward is happening.
But some of these efforts have been attacked by the media. This article called one group’s effort ‘vigilantism’, and an attempt to ‘insert themselves into routine election administration processes’. It warned that such efforts could ‘intimidate voters’, making them ‘jump through hoops’ in order to preserve their right to vote.
I keep repeating the polling showing that about half the country does not trust our elections (here is a rather recent study from Stanford that validates Rasmussen polling). Clearly, the status quo and just dismissing these concerns and even going after citizen election groups using lawfare is not going to restore trust. To be fair, some of these citizen efforts may swing the pendulum too far. Clerks are being taxed with requests at levels they have never had to deal with before. But I see this as ultimately positive. The public needs to be engaged and informed as to how our elections are run. The downside of what is going on, I believe, is transient. It will settle down as we incorporate more transparency into our elections and put other checks in place that will restore confidence.
NV: Caucus vs Primary - This will be familiar to Idahoans following our own caucus vs primary squabble; the Nevada GOP has opted to do a caucus instead of a mandatory state run primary in order to select delegates for the RNC convention. It makes the statewide primary a moot point in Nevada, but state law requires that it be held anyway. Citing the NV Governor and legislature’s rejection of election reforms such as voter ID, the GOP Chair led the move to a GOP run caucus that will require voter ID, same day voting, and no absentee ballots. Read more here. Epoch Times article here (paywall).
US: RFK Jr Leaves Dem Party to Run as Independent - Having earlier cited the insurmountable task of defeating Biden given the structure of Democratic primaries, Robert Kennedy Jr officially declared his candidacy for President as an independent. Polls are mixed as to whether his bid may draw more votes from Biden or Trump. RFK is polling around 14% and raising money on about the same level as Republican candidate Tim Scott. Read more here.
NC: Legislature Overrides Governor’s Veto of Election Bills - The new legislation shortens the time that absentee ballots can be received, bans drop boxes, eliminates private funding, and seeks even representation by both parties on local election boards. Democrats have already filed suit stating the legislation is not constitutional. Read more here.
I believe you have to work your way into the elections system gently, such as some people here in Louisiana starting out as poll commissioners or GOP County Committee members. The clerks seem to fend off the mob if that's what it looks like to them. We have to become the system.