Sharing the Facts about Mass Challenges to Voter Rolls and Election Administration

Across the country, there are strict processes in place to ensure that voter rolls are up to date. Amid an increase in efforts to challenge voter registrations by the tens of thousands and overwhelm those systems, it’s important to know the facts first.

Here’s what we know:

• States follow rigorous procedures to keep their voter rolls clean and accurate. They cross-check with other data sources, like change-of-address notices and death records, to keep the rolls up to date.
• Voter roll maintenance is a careful process that follows state and federal law. That’s so the rolls are continuously kept up-to-date, and eligible voters aren’t prevented from voting or concerned about their registrations being inactivated by mistake.
• Keeping voter rolls up to date is part of the robust system of checks and balances that protects American voters. These safeguards make sure every eligible vote, and only every eligible vote, is counted.
• The mass challenges we’re seeing are not about keeping accurate voter rolls. They’re about driving distrust in our free and fair elections. There is a challenge process and timeline outlined by both federal and state law.
• Mass voter challenges tend to sweep up eligible voters who already face challenges exercising the freedom to vote, like elderly voters, voters with disabilities, military families, and Black and Latino voters.
• Mass voter challenges are, ultimately, meant to be a distraction. They’re just paperwork and lawsuits based on conspiracies, pulling election officials’ time and voters’ focus away from the critical work of election season.

Here are some ways to talk about the process of voter roll maintenance, to help voters understand what’s going on.

• Emphasize the thorough steps that keep voter rolls in your state clean and up to date.
• Provide specifics, in plain language, about the safeguards in your state. For example, your state may regularly cross-check voter rolls with death records and driver’s license records, and then remove voters who have died or moved.
• Say that voter roll maintenance is a process that follows strict federal and state laws, which is critical to protecting eligible voters. Challenging voters in bulk, when there are processes to remove ineligible people, makes it more likely that eligible voters will be denied their freedom to vote.
• Explain that voter roll maintenance is one of the many steps that election officials take to keep elections secure. Their job is to make sure every eligible vote, and only every eligible vote, is counted.
• Point out that mass voter challenges and other challenges to voter lists are often based on unreliable or outdated data. They are also made redundant by election officials’ regular list maintenance procedures.
• Avoid repeating disinformation claims, even for the purpose of refuting them.
• Avoid condemning people who have bought into bad-faith claims and conspiracy theories after being repeatedly targeted with them.
• Don’t automatically dismiss good-faith questions about how states maintain their voter rolls. Most people have never had a reason to think about it.