(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Here We Go Again: Georgia is Removing (mostly Black) Voters from the Rolls using incomplete data... [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-25

As far as I know, Hope Springs from Field PAC [website which needs to be re-tooled] is the only entity focused on Swing States taking a wholistic approach to GOTV. All the pieces of the puzzle have to be addressed, and we do that. Part of this is Voter Protection, making sure that voters are able to vote and have their votes count.

Our Georgia volunteers knew this was coming. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Large-scale cancellations occur in Georgia every odd-numbered year, a regularly scheduled postelection cleanup of the state’s voter registration list,” so we had volunteers on the look out. Say what you like about the suppressive nature of the tactic, at least Georgia is transparent about the process and they make the lists available.

States using NCOA for voter verification

As part of our wholistic approach, we look for voters who’ve been left behind by the MAGA Voter Purges as part of our weekly canvasses in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. So yesterday’s announcement that this was coming in Georgia was already factored into our plans for the year.

The number (455,000), “one of the largest registration removals in U.S. history,” was a surprise.

Since 2021, Hope Springs volunteers have found and re-registered more than 14,638 voters who were removed in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. 68% of these were African-American.

Voter purges are an often-flawed process of cleaning up voter rolls by deleting names from registration lists. While updating registration lists as voters die, move, or otherwise become ineligible is necessary and important, when done irresponsibly — with bad data or when two voters are confused for the same person — the process can knock eligible voters off the roll en masse, often with little notice. Many voters discover they’re no longer listed only when they arrive at the polling place. As a result, many eligible Americans either don’t vote or are forced to cast provisional ballots.

There are two ways that Republicans have regularly purged voters in the Swing States. One is based on voter inactivity. VAN allows Hope Springs volunteers to know when a voter is in danger of losing their Right to Vote when they are knocking on their door. And, more often than not, when we find one spouse on that list, the other is there, as well. We’ve also used this as part of our GOTV pitch when the situation (or voter) warrants. This is the wonder of using VAN and the models that can be built from it.

Orange States: State law allows removal from voter rolls based solely on voter's inactivity

The other way is through use of outside lists like the National Change of Address list. Reaching out to voters who make these lists — and i do mean, plural, lists — about their voter status drives a key part of our walk lists or turf. Hope Springs volunteers know when they are talking to a purged voter or someone whose voter status may be pending. But the significance here is that we haven’t yet knocked on all the doors where a voter has been, or could be, purged from the voter rolls.

And this is something that we worry about. We have found voters who were wrongly removed, who still lived at the same address from which they first registered.

Many Hope Springs from Field organizers as well as our volunteers like to think of ourselves as counterweights to Rightwing Voter Suppression. While there are many attempts to do so by using the courts, we have taken up the effort in the field, registering (or, more accurately, re-registering) purged voters, making sure voters who could soon be on the Republican Purge Lists are aware of their status and what they can do about it. At their doors, in the comfort of their neighborhood.

But we don’t just talk to Purged Voters and those under that threat, we talk to their neighbors, making sure voters in the area know, as well. Because we don’t reach them all, and we have found that voters in the area where Purged Voters live are much more likely to vote in the next election when they learn someone in the area (they don’t know who) got purged. Most people we talk to are offended when they find out about it — even if they don’t know who is was. But Republicans are targeting lower income, immigrants and students trying to narrow the electorate so that Trump can win. Because we all know Trump can’t win with a level playing field.

Like i’ve said before, we don’t have to just take it when MAGA Republicans are frontally-assaulting the Right to Vote. And we do have volunteers who love this part of our mission (chasing down voters who have lost, or are about to lose, their Right to Vote). But, again, Hope Springs volunteers are not alone here. We’ve kept our partner Black Churches informed about these Voter Purges, and they’ve located members who are on these lists, as well. And it seems that those congregations aren’t too thrilled that they’ve “been targeted.” To be clear, we don’t take on these missions for any other reason than we want to win elections. Republicans seek to narrow the electorate, Democrats always do better when we are expanding the electorate. Informing (former) voters that they were removed from the voter rolls and re-registering them has been successful in the past in creating more frequent voters among this class of less frequent voters. Expanding our voter base.

Hope Springs from Field has been knocking on doors, serving as a resource to Elections Committees in Black Churches and partnering with local civics and civil rights groups to raise awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. Election Protection was central to the Obama primary effort in 2008 because we were running against a party favorite with strong roots in state and local party organizations and we needed to appeal to voters outside that framework. We are returning to the old school basics: looking for patterns, addressing issues that have come up in the past and making sure authorities know about issues that are likely to (or even just may) come up in each election.

Hope Springs volunteers are not alone here. We’ve kept our partner Black Churches informed about these Voter Purges, and they’ve located members who are on these lists, as well (we don’t include these numbers in our counts because they weren’t found at voter’s doors). And it seems that those congregations aren’t too thrilled that they’ve “been targeted.” To be clear, we don’t take on these missions for any other reason than we want to win elections. Republicans seek to narrow the electorate, Democrats always do better when we are expanding the electorate. Informing (former) voters that they were removed from the voter rolls and re-registering them has been successful in the past in creating more frequent voters among this class of less frequent voters. Expanding our voter base.

Of the 455,000 registrations targeted for removal, most belong to people who appear to have moved either by filling out change-of-address forms, registering to vote in another state or getting a driver’s license in another state. ERIC identified 255,000 of those registrations for Georgia election officials.

The AJC article notes, “conservative critics of the state’s voter registration list allege it’s inaccurate and vulnerable to voter fraud. They say ERIC hasn’t been effective in finding outdated registrations among the state’s 8.3 million registered voters.” Hope Springs volunteers have found the opposite, that not all voters listed as errors in ERIC are errors.

But Georgia makes this easy for us. And, thus, we can target voter purges easier. We may not like that they are doing it — especially with all the errors that are being made — but at least they are aboveboard about it. Most other states are not. But here’s the thing: we’ve gained knowledge in our year-in and year-out chasing down voters who’ve been removed in these states. And many of our volunteers tell other voters when looking for those voters that the state removes people in secret while we work to increase voter understanding of an often opaque process. For example, given Georgia law, voters become “inactive” when they appear to have moved, and then they can be canceled if they miss the next two general elections. Very, very few voters are aware that they “appear to have moved” or that entire families can be impacted when children move out or go off to college. More than half the voters we’ve located and re-registered since inception were removed from the voter rolls because of paperwork filed by their children.

In addition to the voters found by ERIC who have moved, another 100,000 registrations set for cancellation belong to voters who haven’t participated in Georgia elections for the last nine years or longer. Through Georgia’s “use it or lose it” law, voters lose their registrations if they don’t have any contact with election officials for five years and then miss two general elections.

This is something else that voters are generally unaware of and don’t think too much about. Who counts how many years since they last voted. And this is something that results proportionately in many more African-Americans getting thrown off the voter rolls. Which, i think, is the point.

Here’s the thing: because we have a comprehensive approach to GOTV, and because we canvass even in non-election years, and because we share the workload with partners such as Black Churches and Divine Nine chapters, Hope Springs we can mitigate these voter suppression tactics. And this work helps Democratic candidates, as well, because having clean voter rolls reduces costs in direct mail and doesn’t waste the time of their volunteers when canvassing in the Fall of an election year. I have no way to measure the impact of the byproduct of informing neighbors, churches and other groups of this MAGA tactic to narrow the electorate.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/25/2312395/-Here-We-Go-Again?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.