Voter Purges Have Increased Substantially Over The Last Decade

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We are weeks away from an election and we’re as soon as once more reminding voters to test their voting standing. Irrespective of who you might be or the place you reside, you will need to guarantee you can take part in our nation’s elections. Given widespread voter purges, in Mississippi and past, we’re involved that some voters could also be faraway from the rolls with out their data.

That’s why final Wednesday, One Voice, MS NAACP, Civic Engagement Roundtable, MS Poor Folks’s Marketing campaign, the Authorized Protection Fund (LDF) and the Legal professionals’ Committee for Civil Rights Beneath Regulation held a press convention to spotlight that counties all through Mississippi are improperly purging voters. We discovered that many counties are placing voters on inactive lists or eradicating them with out discover. After an evaluation of knowledge from the circuit clerks’ workplaces all through the state, we’re reminding voters to do all they’ll to make sure they haven’t been faraway from the voting rolls, and the corrective steps they need to take if they’ve been purged.

MORE: Op-Ed: Voter Purges Are Growing Throughout The South. We Should Put A Cease To The Observe

To be clear, the upkeep of voter rolls is a traditional strategy of cleansing voter knowledge, eliminating duplicates, eradicating individuals who’re deceased or have been convicted of a disenfranchising felony and eradicating inactive voters. Sadly, Mississippi has used this course of as a voter suppression device by dropping voters from the rolls with out discover. That is traumatic for voters, and it limits their capacity to take part in our nation’s democracy.

When voters are faraway from the rolls with out discover, eligible Individuals are unable to vote or are pressured to forged provisional ballots. What’s extra, voter purges have elevated considerably during the last decade. And the rise has been highest in states with a historical past of voting discrimination, based on Brennan Heart analysis.

To place this subject in perspective, voter purging is the primary grievance from our voter safety hotline. It is extremely frequent for us to obtain calls from voters who’ve voted at one place for years, solely to find that they’re now not eligible to vote at this location. As soon as our election safety volunteer determines that the caller is in the proper place, we encourage them to vote by affidavit poll, a course of that’s often discouraged by ballot employees. More often than not, a ballot employee tells the voter to go to a different polling place or to their native county courthouse to forged their poll. This virtually ensures that this particular person is not going to vote on that day. Our ancestors have fought too arduous to see their descendants turned away from the polls via confusion, trickery, and voter suppression.

In 2020, our Election Safety hotline acquired a whole lot of calls from voters in Madison County who had voted within the normal election however had been unable to vote within the run-off on the identical polling place. Our companions at Authorized Protection Fund requested a listing of the voters who had been purged that 12 months that we by no means acquired.

Our workers tried once more to retrieve this info from roughly 24 circuit clerk workplaces. Sadly, solely 5 responded. Most of whom charged us exorbitant charges for these lists. We’re exercising our proper to vote and inspiring our buddies to do the identical, and are pressured to pay for info that must be free. A number of the lists we acquired had been surprising; the over 50,000 individuals on the lists we’ve acquired don’t even signify a fraction of counties on this state.

We all know that our vote is our energy. That’s the reason Mississippians, and truthfully, voters in each state, should double-check their voting standing. Voters ought to make sure that they’ll nonetheless vote the place they sometimes vote and that their voting standing is lively. This info could be verified via the Secretary of State’s web site and thru the native circuit clerk’s workplace.

I’m clear that we’ve got some superb circuit clerks and election commissioners who’re dedicated to creating certain that everybody can vote. However we’re additionally clear that there are some individuals who wish to take this immediately. Voting is a human proper, not a privilege. We’ll assert our rights at present and every single day.

Black Mississippians are not any strangers to assaults on their proper to vote, however we’re dedicated to sustaining democracy and prevailing over each voter suppression tactic that emerges. Voters in each state should be equally dedicated.

Nsombi Lambright is the chief director of One Voice and a member of the Black Southern Ladies’s Collaborative.