Voter list maintenance

The framework for voter list maintenance is determined by federal law. Most notably, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), or “motor voter” law, requires states to offer voter registration at DMVs and other state agencies, and that bulk removals cannot occur within 90 days of an election. The law also mandates voter list maintenance to be non-discriminatory and conducted in accordance with the Voting Rights Act. The act limits the reasons for a voter’s removal from a voting list to a voter’s death, felony conviction, mental incapacity, a change in address outside of the previous jurisdiction, or at the voter’s request. The NVRA does not specify the procedures states must follow for the removal process except for requiring a mailed notice to voters who are suspected to have changed their address. A handful of states are exempt from the NVRA (Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming), since at the time of NVRA passage, they all offered same-day registration at polling places. North Dakota is also exempt since it does not have voter registration. 

A decade after the NVRA became law, Congress also passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), which required states to develop a “single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list,” and to coordinate voter records with other state agencies. HAVA also clarified the language in the NVRA that bars removing a voter simply for failure to vote in an election. However, HAVA does permit the removal of voters who do not respond to an address confirmation mailing and subsequently don’t vote for two federal general elections.

While all states are obligated to comply with the NVRA and HAVA, federal law allows individual states to enforce their own voter list maintenance procedures and to define the parties responsible for conducting list maintenance itself. According to the 2022 Elections Administration and Voting (EAVS) survey, 35 states specify that only local election officials are responsible for adding and removing names from voter lists (bottom-up systems), while 13 states report that list maintenance is done by both local and state-level officials. All other states and territories only conduct list maintenance at the state level (top-down systems). Additionally, these entities receive information about inactive voters from a variety of sources; the most common data sources across the country are state vital statistics office death records, reports from other states that a former resident has registered to vote, change-of-address notices from the Postal Service, and entities that maintain felony or prison records. 

A map of the United States depicting the entity responsible for voter list maintenance in each state. The bright green color indicates only the state is in charge, the dull green indicates only local jurisdictions are in charge, and the purple indicates both state and local election officials are in charge of list maintenance.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, all states require the removal of voters who have died or moved to a new address outside the previous jurisdiction, but other criteria for removal vary across the country. For instance, 48 states disqualify voters convicted of certain crimes, 34 states remove voters who have been deemed mentally incompetent by the courts, and 20 states have a removal procedure for inactive voters. One of the most common reasons for a voter’s removal from the registration list is if the voter has changed addresses and has failed to verify this change. The NVRA requires state governments to mail a pre-paid, pre-addressed forwardable notice to registrants with a changed address, to be returned with updated voter information. If a voter fails to return the notice, states may remove the voter from the registration list, though they may only do so if the voter is inactive or fails to vote in the time between when the notice was sent and the second federal election after the notice was mailed. 

A map of the United States depicting the laws for voter inactivity as grounds for voter list removal in each state. The dark blue indicates states where inactivity does not trigger removal, the medium blue (Georgia only) indicates removal triggered after 5 years of inactivity, the light pink indicates removal after 4 years of inactivity, the bright blue indicates removal after one general election year of inactivity, the dark pink indicates removal after 2 years of inactivity, and the yellowish-green (North Dakota only) indicates a state not applicable.

The shifts of millions of voters relocating, dying, or becoming eligible to vote every year pose a challenge to election offices as they work to keep their voter registration lists up to date. Though the NRVA allows it, states do not automatically share and cross-check voter registration information between them. To combat the vast quantity of inaccurate voting records, the Electronic Information and Voting Center (ERIC) was founded in 2012 by seven states to assist in utilizing best practices for voter list maintenance, including the verification of voting information across state borders. The organization now includes 25 member states (including the District of Columbia); these members share their voter registration information with ERIC, which then provides monthly reports on deceased and relocated voters, as well as on duplicate registrations. ERIC compares state registration lists with federal entities such as the US Postal Service, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Motor Vehicles to further validate the accuracy of voter registration lists.

A map of the United States depicting the state members of the Election Registration Information Center (ERIC). The pink states indicated ERIC members, and the blue states indicate non-ERIC members.

ERIC is governed and supported by the member states themselves, who contribute financially to the organization in proportion to the size of their voting-age populations. The organization also certifies the secure and anonymous transfer of registration data through a tactic called one-way hashing, which randomly mixes up confidential identifiers (such as a voter’s social security number and driver’s license number) into a string of alphanumeric characters. Only under limited, specific circumstances does ERIC ever share its list of maintenance reports with outside parties: for example, member states may disclose data from In-State Duplicate Reports and Deceased Reports after the Limited Access Death Master File (LADMF) protection lapses.

In 2022, eight states withdrew from ERIC citing concerns about methodological transparency and data privacy, among other reasons (Louisiana was the first state to remove itself from ERIC, and Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia have since followed suit.) There is concern among election security experts that this exodus of Republican-led states signals a rejection of nonpartisan election administrative procedures, which increases the risks of inaccurate voter databases. Despite this worry, there have been several public defenses of ERIC and its reliable methods from Republicans, such as from Brad Raffensberger, Georgia Secretary of State. Additionally, New York and California have bills authorizing their involvement in multistate voter list maintenance organizations, whether it be with ERIC or an equivalent consortium.

While removing voters for specific reasons from registration lists is necessary to keep elections running efficiently, there have been cases where eligible voters are taken off the rolls, largely due to flawed data-matching practices because states relied on inaccurate information or used erroneous methods. For example, in 2016, the Arkansas Secretary of State sent county officials a list of over 7,700 records from the Arkansas Crime Information Center of residents that should be removed from the voter rolls because of their status as felons. As it turns out, a high percentage of those voters were in fact eligible—they had instead been put on this list due to some other interaction with the courts (anything from a misdemeanor to a divorce). Texas encountered a similar problem in 2012, when the state removed voters who were presumed to be deceased from the voter rolls. This removal relied on a comparison between the registration records and the Texas Master Death File. However, this method relied on “weak matches” to target voters, meaning that, for example, a resident whose birth date and last four digits of their Social Security number match a deceased person’s record would be inaccurately identified for removal. 

A recent concern has been an increase in activist efforts to conduct voter list maintenance practices themselves, fueled by the belief that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that state list maintenance procedures are unreliable. One such project, a web scraper called “EagleAI,” was deployed by the “Election Integrity Network,” an organization advocating for more restrictive voting policies in key swing states. Sourcing from the National Change of Address database, voter tax property data, and criminal justice records, EagleAI conducts data-matching methods that have been criticized as faulty to pool extensive lists of voters from around the country who are purportedly ineligible to vote. The Election Integrity Network and other such groups have focused their efforts on encouraging election officials and state lawmakers to disavow ERIC and replace it with EagleAI.

According to the most recent EAVS survey, over half of removals across the country were either because a voter had moved out of the voting jurisdiction, or they had died. In addition, the share of voters who were removed from voter lists between 2020 and 2022 totaled a mere 8.5% of all registered voters across the United States. This removal rate has stayed fairly consistent over the last decade, though some research suggests that removal rates may have risen in some jurisdictions that had been historically restricted by the Voting Rights Act following the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling.

Controversy over list maintenance practices has increased in recent years, in particular over the procedures states have in place for removing a voter if they do not cast a ballot in several election cycles and fail to respond to mailed notices. While the NVRA mandates that all states notify inactive voters and wait for two federal election cycles for a response, states vary widely in how strict their policies are regarding inactive voter removal. The legal debate surrounding these practices is ongoing, including the debate surrounding the constitutionality of the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling on the permissibility of removal practices in Ohio. At the same time, it is worth noting that an “inactive” status does not necessarily mean a registrant is ineligible to vote. Voters are designated inactive if they have an address in the voter database that is not current, but they are not barred from casting a ballot because of a failure to vote in recent elections.

Voter list maintenance is an essential cog in the election machine, allowing administrators to ensure that elections remain secure, as well as aiding the appropriate allocation of resources needed for each jurisdiction. While the NVRA, HAVA, and other federal laws provide a basic legal foundation for voter list maintenance practices, individual states are given a fair amount of freedom to craft their own protocols. In recent years, the topic of voter list maintenance has been increasingly visible in legal debates and advocacy agendas as citizens and practitioners alike work to ensure the integrity of U.S. democracy. As with many election-related practices, voter list maintenance has evolved to reflect best practices and current political priorities, and it will continue to adapt as the country (and its voters) do the same.

Encouraging Voter List Maintenance Efforts with an ERIC Indicator

United States Election Assistance Commission

National Conference of State Legislatures

Rock the Vote- Democracy Explainers

Brennan Center for Justice Voter Purge Report

Election Registration Information Center (ERIC)

Cases Raising Claims Under the National Voter Registration Act