This article was Originally published By VathbeatNon -information organization covering the local election administration and access to voting.
Author: Carter Walker, Vaybeat
A conservative activist claims that Pennsylvania has “tens of thousands” of incorrectly registered voters, but state officials say that he misleads a normal, legal part of the voter registration system.
Commonwealth regularly cleans his voter lists to eliminate the names of people who moved out of the state or do not qualify in a different way. This process is not immediate. It may take several years because poviats are obliged to send voter notifications to make sure that they are not improperly deprived of civil rights.
All this is regulated by federal and state law.
But it didn’t stop Scott Presler From using these routine delays to suggestion that something is wrong with the registration of voters, in particular democratic.
Presler, who was among Donald Trump Most vocal supporters in Pennsylvania say that he used the unnamed tool of artificial intelligence to identify voters registered in many states at the same time. Presler suggested that these registrations were false and said that he would direct them to law enforcement agencies, although he said he hadn’t done it yet.
But many registrations themselves are not a sign of fraud or illegal voting. In fact, they can be a sign of labor law in accordance with the laws of voters.
Like federal and state law affects the time of removal
In the United States all over the country, people can stay on Linich voters for years after moving to another state. Federal law, National Act on registration of voters from 1993He rules the way to remove voters from the roller.
In cases where electoral officials find out that someone could move out of jurisdiction, for example, from data on the change of supply provided by the American postal service, the law requires that electoral officials notify voters of their removal. If the voter does not confirm the move, they may have to confirm their address before they can vote in the original jurisdiction. But they cannot be removed until they left voting in two subsequent universal elections after notification. It can last up to four years.
Under Pennsylvania’s lawThese notifications are also sent to voters who have not participated in the elections for five years or updated registration. This means that the removal of the voter who moved may take up to eight or nine years if the NVRA removal process begins later. According to 2024 Report from the State DepartmentIn 2023, the poviat sent 4320 notifications of duplicate voters’ registrations and over 44,000 notifications for voters who, who thought they had moved out of their state.
In fact, voting in two separate jurisdictions in the same election is illegal. Election officials Cancel such matters regarding double voting for the purpose of accusationAND The research turned out to be very scarce.
When it comes to duplicate registrations, countries have been providing data for a long time to try to identify and solve it immediately.
Many of these works take place via the Electronic Registration Information Center or Eric, a double -sided compact compact data division, which aims to solve this exact problem.
Eric compares data from the Member States, along with other sources, such as the National Database of Changing Postal Service, in order to identify the state so that the States could begin to remove these names. Eric says he identified Over 13 million movements between countries Since its creation in 2013.
But several states led by Republicans abandoned Eric in recent years after he became the target of disinformation, undermining the efforts of cooperation between states.
Changes in Pennsylvania are part of the routine electoral kick maintenance
Presler introducing claims go beyond the view that duplicate registrations indicate fraud. In his public comments and in an interview with Votbeat and Spotlight Pa, he suggested that his claims led the Department of State of Pennsylvania to amend over 10,000 democratic voters from busy to inactive – although they are poviats, not the state, they manage registration voters.
During the week from February 3 to February 10, weekly statistics of voters in Pennsylvania showed that about 14,500 registered Democrats moved from busy to inactive. But the State Department said that these changes had nothing to do with Presler.
“All the cancellation of voters this week-as each other week-the result of poviats conducting routine maintenance of voters in accordance with the law, because they act consistently throughout the year”, spokesman for the State Department Amay Glill He said -Mailu. “To our knowledge, zero appeal resulted from Presler’s” research “.
About 2,000 Republicans and 3300 unrelated or voters of third parties also moved from active to inactive in the same week.
A review of weekly data from the beginning of 2024 also shows that while 14,500 voters the status of changing is relatively high for a week, similar changes occurred in at least seven other cases this year.
Most registration changes took place in Philadelphia, which Presler specifically called for social media. History of election fraud in Philadelphia He helped feed conspiracy theories And unjustified allegations directed at the city.
But Seth BluesteinThe Republican Commissioner of the City in Philadelphia said that the number of changes in status in the city is both normal and unrelated to Presler. Philadelphia is by far the largest city of the state, and usually democratic.
Bluestein said that last Tuesday, before Presler began to publish about duplicate voters in the city, city employees processed a lot of backlog in the national change in the party and returned data from messages, which is an increase in status changes. All three offices of the city commissioners confirmed that Presler did not contact them.
Federal law limits the systematic cleaning of voter lamps in the 90-day period conducting federal elections, so it is normal that more work takes place in months after the election. For example, in January 2024, Philadelphia moved about 17,000 democrats from active to inactive status during the week.
Presler’s efforts are not closely directed at Roll Voter integrity. He combined his campaign to remove duplicate registration with its goal, which is to transfer the state from many registered democrats with lots of Republicans.
The community currently has 185,000 registered democrats than Republicans.
Carter Walker is a Valbeat reporter in cooperation with Spotlight Pa. Contact Carter at the address cwalker@votebeat.org.
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