Local representatives are split on a pair of bills being considered in the state Legislature that would require election commissioners to send confirmation notices to voters who have not voted in at least one election within a set number of years and to remove them from the Statewide Elections Management System if they do not respond to the notice.
Supporters of the bills — House Bill 4 and Senate Bill 2588 — say they would help keep voter rolls up to date and accurate, while opponents, including the Birmingham-based Southern Poverty Law Center, say it violates the National Voter Registration Act and risks purging registered voters from the rolls just for skipping elections.
Currently, election commissions are permitted to remove names from rolls if voters die, move away, or are convicted of certain felonies. SB 2588 would allow voters to be removed for failing to respond to a confirmation notice, vote at least once or update their voter registration within four years of the notice being delivered. Under that bill, commissions must send the notices to “each registered elector who has failed to vote at least once in the previous two (2) years.”
HB 4 would require county election commissions to remove voters from the rolls if voters fail to “respond to the confirmation notice and vote at least once during a period of four (4) consecutive years … or update the voter’s registration information and vote at least once during a period of four (4) consecutive years.”
Rep. Kabir Karriem (D-Columbus) said he is concerned the House bill in particular will require electors to vote to keep from being purged from the rolls.
“From the language in the bill, it says that, and that’s wrong,” Karriem said. “Just because a person doesn’t respond by postcard or does not vote within a year’s time, they should not be purged from the roll.”
He claimed the move is an effort to undergo a “statewide purge” of the voter rolls in response to claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.
“Most of it is coming from the Republican party based off the false allegation of voter fraud in the presidential election, I think,” he said. “It’s really disheartening that this is such a concentrated effort to purge people off the rolls instead of trying to make it easier for people to vote. It’s just the times we’re living in.”
Most local legislators said they haven’t read the bills, which were just released from committee along with dozens of other bills currently awaiting approval in the Legislature. However, those who responded to The Dispatch’s requests for comment were divided along party lines over the issue, with Republicans saying they like the idea of the bill helping keep the voter rolls up-to-date and Democrats saying they worry about removing electors in violation of voting rights.
Sen. Chuck Younger (R-Columbus) said he has not read the bills and can’t say yet whether he will support them, but that he is “definitely” for “purging” the voter rolls.
“For everything, not just fraud,” he said. “If there’s dead people on there, they need to be taken off. It’s not a Democrat or Republican thing to me. It’s just they need to be purged and make sure that everybody’s where they are, in my opinion.”
Current process for removing electors
The National Voter Registration Act requires election officials to maintain up-to-date voter records but prohibits purging names under certain circumstances, such as within 90 days of a federal election.
Caren Short, senior staff attorney with Southern Poverty Law Center, said the law also prohibits election commissions from removing registrants just for failure to vote.
A similar law to the two Mississippi’s Legislature is considering passed in Ohio and was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018. But Short said that “use-it-or-lose-it” law still violates the NVRA.
“You cannot remove people just for not voting,” she said.
Moreover, she said, starting with lists of people who have voted is not an accurate way of telling whether individuals have moved or died. Confirmation notices also require the voter to do the work, rather than the election commission.
“It’s on the burden of the voter then to respond to, and if they fail to vote for those four years, and if they miss that card, then they will be removed after a period of four years,” Short said. “So if you fail to vote for six years, and you miss that card, you’ll be removed from the voting rolls.”
She said both the NVRA and Southern Poverty Law Center encourage states to use the national change of address program to figure out who has moved.
Currently, Mississippi election commissions send confirmation notices based on returned mail, such as jury summons, voter registration cards or property tax forms, said Sissy Smitherman, vice president of the Election Commissioner Association of Mississippi and District 2 election commissioner in Oktibbeha County.
“Anything like that, that’s a trigger for us to send a confirmation card to see if we can reach that voter,” Smitherman said. “If we cannot reach that voter when we get two returned mailings, the clock starts ticking. And then we’ve got to wait two federal general elections, which is two years apart, before we can purge. So you’re looking at the earliest that we can purge anybody is three years right now — this with return mailing, not just because they (did not) vote.”
She said election commissioners currently do not look at voting records, except to see if an elderly registrant may require an absentee ballot.
While Smitherman did not offer an opinion on the bills in the Legislature, she did say it could affect registered voters who simply aren’t interested in voting in every election.
“We personally like to get that trigger so we can move forward that way, because if you go in there and start making people inactive because they haven’t voted, you’re going to lose a lot of voters,” Smitherman said. “And most races, besides the state and county and president election, you might only have 20 percent to 40 that might actually vote. And that’s sad.
“We’ve had small elections that only 8 percent showed up,” she added. “… We had one lady that had never ever voted in 20 years that came out in November and voted.”
Short said SB 2588 and HB 4, if passed, would largely affect Black voters, low-income voters and young voters. She echoed Karriem that the bills were written in response to allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite the fact that, she argued, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud from people using the identity of people who have moved, or voting in jurisdictions they no longer live in.
“They’re also targeting people now who don’t vote as much,” she said. “This is younger people, this is people who are a little more disenchanted with our political system. And that’s not fair. We shouldn’t be punishing people who don’t vote. Voting is a fundamental right. For people who say this is going to combat voter fraud, show me. Prove it to me. You can’t. It’s not there.”
Balancing freedom and ‘accuracy’
Sen. Angela Turner-Ford (D-West Point) said she hasn’t read the bills yet, but she does not support purging voters from rolls.
“It sounds like it would make it easier for the election commissioners to purge people from the rolls, and I do not agree with that,” she said. “… I think any time we start dealing with registered voters, there is certainly the potential that people are being disenfranchised. I would have to explore what the current process is on how the rolls are purged.”
Rep. Lynn Wright (R-Columbus) also said he would have to read the bills before deciding whether to support them, but he does not have a problem with purging rolls.
“The voter rolls should have to be purged regularly,” he said.
Sen. Bart Williams (R-Starkville) said there is a balance between keeping rolls updated and ensuring commissioners don’t disenfranchise voters unnecessarily.
“I want to make sure we afford every citizen qualified to vote the ability to vote. We don’t want to hinder that in any way. At the same time, we want to try to have as accurate voter rolls as possible,” he said, adding he would want to research the bills and make sure they satisfy both those concerns.
Rep. Cheikh Taylor (D-Starkville) declined to comment on the bill before reading it, though he added he generally is against purging. Rep. Dana McLean (R-Columbus) and Rep. Rob Roberson (R-Columbus) did not respond to calls from The Dispatch by press time.
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