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1 Eliza Sweren-Becker & Myrna Perez, Voter Purges in an Increasingly Vote-by-Mail World 1 (2020)

handle is hein.brennan/bcjpin0001 and id is 1 raw text is: BRENNAN CENTER FO AUTC Voter Purges in an Increasingly Vote-by-Mail World In response to the likely increase in mail voting due to Covid-19, the Brennan Center has created guidelines to ensure voter purges don't disenfranchise eligible voters. by Eliza Sweren-Becker and Myma P6rez As Americans stay safe at home and election administrators grapple with how to conduct elections during a pandemic, anti-voter groups continue to bring lawsuits seeking to compel aggressive voter roll purges -with at least four lawsuits in the last five months - particularly in swing states and in areas with large populations of voters of color. In every state but one, voters are required to be registered before being able to cast a ballot. State and local election administrators across the country regularly remove or purge voters from the rolls as a part of maintaining voters rolls that are accurate and up to date. But all too often, a purge is erroneous and goes wrong, and eligible voters are removed from the rolls, frequently with no notice or knowledge until they show up at the polls to vote. There was cause for alarm even before Covid-19 turned our election methods upside down. The country was purging more voters (an increase that outpaces increases in population and registration), and purge rates r ic - in jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination after the Supreme Court weakened federal protections against discrimination in voting. Now, the risks posed by erroneous purges are exacerbated as election officials confront the novel coronavirus because state and federal proposals, such as they are, largely rely on vote- by-mail options. But under current vote-by-mail systems, voters who are wrongly purged from the rolls have less opportunity to rectify the error and cast their ballots than when voting in person (when provisional ballots are available), raising the risk that eligible voters will be denied their right to vote. Under federal law, states may conduct systematic purges up until 90 days before a federal election. Given some states' primary schedules, there are still states that could be conducting large-scale purges in the coming weeks without running afoul of federal law. To ensure that mail balloting systems do not increase purge-related disenfranchisements, election administrators should focus on: (1) reducing erroneous purges, (2) adapting in- person protections for purged voters to mail ballot systems, and (3) ensuring that eligible purged voters can still cast a ballot that counts at the polls. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law 120 Broadway, Suite 1750 NewYork, NY 10271