According to a new CBS News investigation, illegal and systemic voter roll purges are currently underway in 19 states:
Why isn't this getting more attention?
... More after the fold ...
[Cross-Posted at Why We Need Obama]
The Brad Blog expounds:
[T]he brief coverage from tonight's Evening News notes 10,000 voters purged in Mississippi, 21,000 in Louisiana and "to top it off, another new study discovered 19 states are ignoring federal law (the National Voter Registration Act), banning systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election."
Among those 19, are a number of battleground states. The report lists: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Masachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington, as places where massive purges have recently taken place.
Read The Full Brad Blog Analysis Here.
Please pass this around to your friends, family and elected leaders. We need to get the word out about this.
Update: I just checked around on CNN, MSNBC and Google News and this story is completely absent. Please spread the word!
Update 2: From the comments, someone pointed out in more detail the shady shit the Montana Republicans are up to:
The state Republican Party this week challenged the eligibility of 6,000 registered Montana voters in seven counties historically considered Democratic strongholds.
More than half of the people challenged statewide live, or previously lived, in Missoula County.
Montanans who are registered to vote in Missoula, Butte-Silver Bow, Lewis and Clark, Deerlodge, Glacier or Hill counties and who filled out a change-of-address card with the U.S. Postal Service in the past 18 months will likely have to verify their correct place of residence before the Nov. 4 election.
Update 3: Well, at least a New Zealand newspaper is on the case with respect to some of the states. Check out what the Federal law provides:
National voting rights groups have contacted officials in Kansas, Michigan and Louisiana in recent weeks because those states appear to be purging registered voters after election officials found duplicate names and birthdays of people on their voter lists and in out-of-state databases, such as driver's license records.
The states are assuming that a more recent driver's license or voter registration in another state indicates that the voter has relocated, meaning the voter registration tied to their prior address is no longer valid. While purging voters who move, die or are imprisoned is a routine part of managing elections, the federal law governing purges -- the National Voter Registration Act -- lays out a multiyear process of trying to contact voters to confirm a change of address before deleting them from voter rolls.
The election attorneys say the NVRA process seeks to err on the side of protecting voting rights and cannot be circumvented by what appears to be a duplicate voter registration.
"The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) limits the circumstances in which a state may cancel a voter's registration," the Fair Elections Legal Network, a Washington-based voting rights consortium, said in a June 24 letter to Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh. "The NVRA does not permit cancellation based on a match alone."
"We are looking at several statewide purge issues," said Bradley Heard, a senior attorney with Advancement Project, a voting rights law firm. He said that in Michigan, both data matching and mailings by local officials to verify a voter's registration information were of concern. "We are also looking at a state law that calls for purging a bunch of voter registration records that are otherwise eligible."