The Purge: Midterm Elections

A Feature Article by Sonia Pramanick

The United States has vowed to give each citizen 18 years or older the right to vote. But what if those who are registered have had their voting rights removed? This midterm election, hundreds of thousands of Americans will go to polling stations to find out that they are no longer registered and thus can’t cast their ballots.

Through a process called voter purging, states are allowed to expunge names of those who have either moved away, died, or are no longer eligible (likely due to felony convictions) from voter registration lists. However, some states have taken this common practice to a new level.

In both Ohio and Georgia, voter purges have become a prominent issue, with people being removed from lists if they decide not to vote in a small two-year period. In fact, just this past June, the Supreme Court ruled that Ohio could continue removing voters from lists if they failed to vote within two years. Ohio and Georgia, both mostly conservative states, have defended their beliefs stating that their efforts are a means to end voter fraud. Democrats, on the other hand, accuse their Republican counterparts of limiting the number of minority voters, who may vote less frequently, and tend to vote for liberal candidates.  

This election season has created a large voter purging controversy in Georgia. Secretary of State and current Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp has overseen a number of purges during his term. In July of 2017, Georgia purged almost 500,000 voters and many of them were minorities. The fact that these large purges occurred only a few months after Kemp announced his candidacy for governor poses a conflict of interest.

Kemp and the GOP have been accused of using this process as a voter suppression tactic. Kemp’s Democrat opponent, Stacey Abrams, has centered her campaign on winning the support of minority groups and voters. In interviews, Abrams has stated that she is “deeply worried” that such a large number of Georgians will be disenfranchised in the upcoming election.

So what’s really wrong with unchecked voter purging?

Other than taking away a constitutional right from innocent people, those who are purged often belong to minority groups who have been discriminated against in the past. In many southern states, the government had previously mandated that any changes to voting practices must be approved by the federal government. This was done to prevent voter discrimination in states with a history of systematic racism. Under the Supreme Court Ruling Shelby County v. Holder of 2013, though, this rule was rescinded, giving those states full ability to change their voter rolls. This affected many states, especially Georgia. Since the law was lifted, 156 of 159 counties in Georgia have seen massive increases in voter purging. In fact, in this past decade alone, the state of Georgia has removed more than 1.6 million people from the voter registrar.

While voter purging can be effective in helping to maintain accurate voting databases, it has recently become a tool to disenfranchise voters. Each and every American was granted a constitutional right to cast a ballot, and it’s disheartening that some people will be denied that voice in the upcoming election. While advocates say that it is a sheer necessity to combat voter fraud, in reality, it is a not-too-covert method to relieve the voter rolls of any political diversity and U.S. citizens of proper representation.

[Sources: www.npr.org, www.brennancenter. www.pbs.org, www.nbcnews.com, www.msnbc.com]