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A network of Republican activists are quietly challenging thousands of voter registrations in battleground states around the country. They call themselves election investigators and are focusing on challenging voters in heavily Democratic areas. For example, in the Detroit suburb of Waterford, a clerk removed 1,000 names from the rolls based on an obscure 1950s-era law. Some were snowbirds who went south for the winter (but were still eligible to vote by absentee ballot) as well as active-duty military personnel. Removing them was illegal. When Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) was alerted to this, she ordered the clerk to reinstate them all because the procedures in the law for removing voters were not followed. She also issued a warning to all the state's other clerks.
In a number of states, if a registered voter has not voted in a certain number of recent elections, that person is a candidate for removal. However, the law almost never gives the clerk the power to simply remove the person. In most cases, the clerk is required to send a letter to the registered address with a form asking the voter if he or she is still living there and wants to continue to be registered there. Only after several failed attempts to contact the voter may the clerk remove the voter.
The activists are being led by former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell and True the Vote, which claim that excess registrations are being used to stuff the ballot box. There is absolutely no evidence that this is true. Also, Republicans are operating in bad faith here. There is an interstate organization, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), whose mission is to help clean up the rolls. In particular, when a voter moves across state lines and registers in the new state, that state sends a message to the old state to remove the voter. This is perfectly legitimate. However, in recent years, Republican-controlled states are dropping out of ERIC (because it also encourages eligible people to register). If Republicans were seriously worried about double-voting, they would support ERIC.
In some states, someone merely challenging a voter's registration has consequences, including blocking the voter from getting an absentee ballot or requiring additional documentation at the polls. The potential for partisan mischief here is enormous and Mitchell considers it a (partial) victory when her team can make it harder for someone in a heavily Democratic area to vote. The Democrats are not playing this game, so it is asymmetric warfare.
Another tactic her group uses is called Check My Vote. It scans addresses for irregularities, such as a missing apartment number or a very high number of voters at some address. Needless to say, the group in Michigan looks only at Detroit and Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan.
The state with the most challenges is Georgia. In the 2021 Senate runoff, 360,000 voters were challenged. In some cases, one voter brought thousands of challenges. True the Vote is planning to ramp up challenges this year. It is developing new software to help it and will also train other people in challenging votes. Karli Swift, a member of the DeKalb County board of elections, said there was no evidence to support the group's claims, but they were unable to handle the onslaught.
In Nevada the Pigpen Project is working on cleaning the voter rolls, sometimes by going door to door to get landlords to go to the county registrar's office to flag the registrations of former tenants. They often claim to be quasi-governmental officials, which they are not. Again, here, the registrar is forbidden by law from just taking the landlord's word for it and removing the voter. There is a procedure to be followed, including sending a letter to the registered address asking the voter if he or she is still there. (V)