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 it prohibits systematic removals of registrants  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 2024 Elections Administration and Voting (EAVS) survey, although six states still use a voter registration system that relies on aggregating information from local jurisdictions' voter registration databases (“bottom-up”), the majority of states (38, including DC) have a central voter registration database that is connected to terminals in local jurisdictions (“top-down”), and seven states have a hybrid system.  In all of these systems, state election officials receive information about inactive voters from a variety of sources; the most common data sources across the country are motor vehicle agencies, death records, and felony or prison records. 

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 their voter registration information. To combat the vast quantity of inaccurate voting records, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was founded in 2012 by seven states to utilize best practices for voter list maintenance, including voting information verification across state borders. The organization now includes 26 member states (including the District of Columbia); these members share their voter registration information with ERIC, which then provides all members with 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.

While removing voters who have died, moved out of state, or otherwise have become ineligible from registration lists is necessary to keep elections running efficiently, there have been cases where eligible voters are taken off the rolls, primarily due to flawed data-matching practices when states relied on inaccurate information or used erroneous methods. For example, in 2016, the Arkansas Secretary of State sent county officials a list, based on records from the Arkansas Crime Information Center, of over 7,000 residents to remove from the voter rolls because of their status as felons. As it turns out, a high percentage of those voters were in fact eligible—most did not have a felony conviction, and 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 matched 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 independently, 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. Using 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, more than 21 million voters, or 9.1% of the 2011 million registered voters in the US were removed from the voter list between the 2022 and 2024 general elections, with the three most common reasons for removal being: failing to return a confirmation notice sent to the voter’s registered address, not voting in two consecutive federal general elections, and moving out of the voting jurisdiction. 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. This trend may continue, as a number of states have seen an increased push for more stringent removal policies in recent years.

Controversy over list maintenance practices has increased in recent years, particularly 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 the frequency of their inactive voter removal procedures. 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. 

The legal debate surrounding list maintenance practices is ongoing. In 2024, the federal government filed cases in both Alabama and Virginia challenging the removal of citizens from the voter rolls during a period of time close to the 2024 election (known as the “Quiet Period” under the NVRA). 

Voter lists are controlled by the state governments, although the federal government has recently begun requesting access; as of 2026 the Department of Justice has requested complete voter registration information from 30 states and the District of Columbia. States on both sides of the aisle have largely refused these demands due to concerns over protecting sensitive data about voters, leading to widespread litigation. 

Also at the federal level, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2025; this legislation would require individuals to provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. Since noncitizen voting in federal elections is vanishingly rare and already explicitly illegal in nearly all jurisdictions, many election administrators have expressed worries the main effect would be an increased operational burden when performing list maintenance. One related verification method that has been the topic of recent discussion is the SAVE program, a long-running program operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that serves as a tool to verify citizenship. In 2025, the SAVE program became more widely accessible to election officials, though it is largely untested for list maintenance purposes. While the system may be helpful for election offices, questions remain about its accuracy and data privacy concerns.

Voter list maintenance is an essential cog in the election machine, allowing administrators to ensure that elections remain secure and 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 both citizens and practitioners 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.