Got the paper Thursday. Looked through the news and comics then went to the Lagniappe section, our “weekend doings” insert. It felt unusually thick, like it used to back before the internet killed everything and clubs and theaters had listings in the paper.
It turns out that the concert and movie previews were only a few pages. The next 58 were filled with lines of tiny type, listing names and addresses of inactive voters.
When a voter or family member reports a move or death, or a parish (county to you) registrar of voters does a postcard purge (like the one I wrote about last month) and knocks the non-responders off the rolls, the Secretary of State removes voters from its “active” rolls. State law requires a public notice be published in time for inactive voters to correct their status, if it is the result of error.
That’s what was in the Lagniappe section. Almost five hundred names per page. Nearly 29,000 people, formerly voters.
That’s just in Orleans Parish (New Orleans). A friend upriver said the list in his parish was bigger.
To be clear, all of these people have been removed from the registration rolls by legal means (though the universe of “legal means” is rapidly expanding in Republican-controlled states). Registrars and secretaries of state do have a responsibility to maintain rolls of only properly-registered voters.
Still, Republican registrars and secretaries often show a marked enthusiasm for such purges, particularly just before election deadlines. And mistakes, of course, are made.
We’re coming to the home stretch. Make checking your registration status part of your monthly routine. Here in Louisiana, you can use the Secretary of State’s voter portal, where you can also directly look to see if you’re on the inactive voter list. If you don't know how to find your own state’s portal, vote.org can answer the simple question, “Are you registered to vote?”
However you do it, please CHECK YOUR STATUS REGULARLY.
This has been a Public Service Scold from Crashing Vor.
