Editor's Note: This report is part of a project on voting rights in America produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program.
SPARTA, Ga. - The cleansing of America's voter
registration rolls occurs every two years and has become a legal
battleground between politicians who say the purges are fair and
necessary, and voting rights advocates who contend that they
discriminate.
Voting rights groups repeatedly have challenged
states' registration purges, including those in Ohio, Georgia, Kansas
and Iowa, contending that black, Latino, poor, young and homeless voters
have been disproportionately purged. In Florida, Kansas, Iowa and
Harris County, Texas, courts have ordered elections officials to restore
thousands of voters to the registration rolls or to halt purges they
found discriminatory.
The 1993 National Voter Registration Act mandates that state and local
elections officers keep voter registration lists accurate by removing
the names of people who die, move or fail in successive elections to
vote. Voters who've been convicted of a felony, ruled mentally
incompetent or found to be noncitizens also can be removed. The U.S.
Election Assistance Commission reported that 15 million names were
scrubbed from the lists nationally in 2014.
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