Voter purges are on the rise in states with a history of racial discrimination

[babylonsister]

Voter purges are on the rise in states with a history of racial discrimination
The increase coincides with a Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, according to a new report.
By Li [e-mail] Jul 20, 2018, 3:11pm EDT


States are kicking a growing number of voters off their rolls in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act.

The rate of voter purges — a sometimes faulty process that states use to clean their voter rolls — is significantly higher than it was a decade ago, according to a new report from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.

This increase coincides with a 2013 Supreme Court decision, which struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act that required nine states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval when altering their election laws.

The spike is notable. Between 2006 and 2008, 12 million voters were purged from voter rolls. Between 2014 and 2016, that number rose to 16 million — a roughly 33 percent increase.

more...

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/20/17595024/voter-purge-report-supreme-court-voting-rights-act

[aquamarina]

1. As much as I hate that this happens

People need to take ownership of their voting eligibility. Find out what you need and get to it. We have elections in this country every two years. If someone had problems in with their ability to vote 2016 they should have taken care of it in 2016 so that it would not be an issue this time around. I want to pound my head on my desk every time I read one of these stories.

I protect my right to vote. I routinely check my eligibility status to make sure nobody fucks with me and given all the repuke crap everyone should be doing this. Also, if you can sign up as a permanent absentee voter, DO IT. There is a lot less ratfucking if your ballot is mailed directly to you. No one asks for your id when you cast an absentee ballot. And if you are worried about mailing it in, you can drop it off at a voting center.

Come on people. This is serious. November is less than 4 months away.

[SamKnause]

2. Fucking republicans don't want anyone to vote except white people.

White people who support the republican party.

There are no words to describe how evil these fuckers are.

As a 65 year old white woman I have never cast a vote for a republican.

Never have, never will !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Igel]

3. So purge rates in former preclearance states has increased more than in states not subject to it.

But the next question has to be what the averages are like: Are the former preclearance states playing catch-up or are they surpassing the average for, say, the past 20 years?

After all, if you have very limited ability to prune registrations for 10 years and then find you're able to, you're likely to do that immediately and find a lot of wood you consider dead. Then you'd have considerable more prunings than your neighbor, who was able to prune as much as he thought necessary for the previous 10 years.

That doesn't rule out excessive pruning or purging, to be sure. But charging in with "you're guilty!", taking offensiveness to be the best offense, and offense is always meritorious until it isn't, isn't how I was trained to think. Instead, I was trained to evaluate the claim and look for counterevidence (even if it's my own claim, this is "critical thinking" prior to extreme polarization), and then if the claim survives counterevidence and testing accept it as true or at least plausible. I haven't seen adequate evidence that the claim we're to infer, that those states are acting in a racist manner simply by increasing their purge rates, is necessarily true.