The main weapon the GOP is using to purge voting rolls is called caging. They were under a federal consent decree forbidding its use from 1982 to 2018, but that year five Republicans on the US Supreme Court legalized the practice.
In the direct-mail business, when junk mail is returned because its undeliverable those pieces of mail were put in a cage to be later fed into a computer to remove the bad addresses, which is where the term caging came from.
Republicans, though, have elevated caging into a partisan art form. They mail postcards that intentionally look like junk mail into heavily Democratic areas that must be returned within a specific time period or the voter will be scrubbed from the rolls for inactivity. The typical return rate is 6.8%.
When Democrats sued in 2018 to stop Ohio Secretary of State John Husted from caging voters in that state, Sonja Sotomayor wrote in her dissent in the Husted v Randolph case that voters were purged after missing an election and after failing to send back one piece of mail, even though there is no reasonable basis to believe the individual actually moved. At best, purged voters are forced to needlessly reregister if they decide to vote in a subsequent election; at worst, they are prevented from voting at all because they never receive information about when and where elections are taking place.
She added:
As one example, amici point to an investigation that revealed that in Hamilton County, African-American-majority neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati had 10% of their voters removed due to inactivity since 2012, as compared to only 4% of voters in a suburban, majority-white neighborhood.
In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that only around 4 percent of Americans move every year, revealing the lie that Ohios Husted was just trying to keep the voting rolls clean:
The record shows that in 2012 Ohio identified about 1.5 million registered votersnearly 20% of its 8 million registered votersas likely ineligible to remain on the federal voter roll because they changed their residences.
When Democrats are talking about fighting fire with fire, organizing partisan ballot challenges, voter roll challenges, and caging in heavily Republican districts should also be weapons in their arsenal.
After all, there are huge, well-funded Republican organizations like True The Vote actively challenging voter registrations and attempting to remove individuals from the rolls. They include:
Soles to the Rolls, active in Michigan, formally affiliated with Citizens Outreach Foundation.
Pigpen Project, based in Nevada. Linked to former GOP operatives; involved in trying to purge over 11,000 voter registrations in Washoe County.
The Peoples Audit operating in Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia.
Look Ahead America, active across multiple states, including Missouri, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and others, founded by a Trump campaign alum.
Wisconsins North of 29 connected to Mike Lindell; active in Wisconsin.
Clean Elections USA (CEUSA) operates in Arizona and has been accused of intimidating voters by showing up at drop boxes in military gear, with drones, and photographing voters.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
