purging voters who do not vote require a mailing, FOLLOWED BY failure to vote in
two consecutive federal elections, followed by a second mailing.
In
order to evaluate how many voters who were incorrectly transferred to "Inactive"
status are actually cancelled, you have to wait until approximately three years
after the Inactive status took effect; those voters for whom records show no
voting history are collected up, typically after two November federal elections
(which take place every two years, on even-numbered years). They are then,
typically in the next (odd-numbered) year, sent a NON-FORWARDABLE mailer. If
that mailer comes back to the elections office, or if they do not respond to it,
they are purged.
So I examined the issue of actual harm by going back to
a 2005 database, provided by Regina Newman, an attorney and one of the
plaintiffs in the 2010 Shelby County election lawsuit.
This database
contained the voting histories for the 2004 federal general election. It also
contained the "status" -- Active or Inactive.
history list provided to a former Shelby County elections commissioner, Shep
Wilbun, from discovery documents in a 2006 election lawsuit. This file omitted
federal general elections altogether, but did contain voter address and status.
I separated out a total of 1,638 voters who were in both the 2005 and
2006 voter lists; had voted in the 2004 General election, and had been deemed
"Active" in 2005, but were transferred to "Inactive" in 2006, but had no other
complicating factors (no felonies, still alive, didn't move, not a duplicate,
etc.)
These 1,638 voters did not qualify for "Inactive" status.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 1,638 INCORRECTLY FLAGGED AS
"INACTIVE" VOTERS?
I then obtained the 2009 voter database
containing records for all active, inactive and cancelled voters, dated
September 2009. From the list of 1,638 voters, I found 568 who were cancelled,
and removed from the voter list, with the "status reason: "Cancel - Inactive
Status for 2 Fed Gen".
Thus, of the 1,638 voters wrongfully deemed
"Inactive", 35 percent were actually cancelled for not having a voting history
in two federal general elections. I could not confirm this lack of voting on any
of the dozen or so voter history databases I have dated 2006-2009, for one
simple reason: Shelby County has an odd habit of omitting the crucial "federal
general election" histories for ALL voters altogether when it prints the voter
history files. The last two federal general elections keep getting left off the
reports. Consistently. Making it impossible to either corroborate the "no vote"
status or to compare successive files to see if the histories are disappearing.
Keep in mind that the state uploads from Shelby County frequently, so an
eroding history inside Shelby County will end up eroded on the state database as
well.
Now, as for the remaining 1,070 "inactive" (not!) voters: They had
to jump through extra hoops to remain on the list.
- 552 re-activated
their registration with a confirmation mailing.
- 279 re-registered.
-
201 were reactivated by casting a vote.
- 48 were kept inactive with a note
that a mailer had been returned.
It does wrong to voters to capriciously
subject a set of them to extra steps. But we have twin compounding problems:
1) If voter histories later erode away for some voters, they go into
end-stage purge mode. All it takes to remove them is a non-forwardable mailer.
2) I have been contacted by a credible source within the U.S. Post
Office, who reports that this nonforwardable mailer is being spotted with
truncated, that is, non-deliverable addressing. I have traced the source of
these mailings to a private Austin, Texas-based company called Business Ink
Corporation. This firm has a branch in Memphis, and according to research
provided by Susan Pynchon of Florida Fair Elections Coalition, is reported to
handle mailing business for 500 counties.
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