Most politicians would think twice before boasting about how many of their own constituents they’ve knocked off the voter rolls, but not today’s crop of Republican secretaries of state.
With the midterm elections just over two weeks away, GOP election chiefs across the country are competing over who can post the biggest numbers—and they’re doing it with the encouragement, and the databases, of the Trump administration.
In Kentucky, Secretary of State Michael Adams recently announced more than 318,000 removals from the rolls since he took office. His summary of the effort: “We’ve vigorously purged voters who have moved away, passed away, or been put away.”
Missouri’s Denny Hoskins took nearly 240,000 people off the rolls last year. More than half of them—some 135,000—weren’t dead or convicted of anything; they were simply classified as “inactive.” Hoskins says it’s his job to minimize ineligible voters.
In Ohio, Frank LaRose last month published a list of nearly 209,000 registrations slated for cancellation, declaring that the Buckeye State keeps the “cleanest voter rolls in the country.” LaRose’s record suggests “clean” is in the eye of the beholder. In 2023, he quietly canceled more than 26,000 registrations just days after ballots went out for that fall’s abortion rights referendum. A Democratic state legislator who dug into the records found over 1,000 voters wrongfully removed in Cuyahoga County alone.
And in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger’s office wrapped up one of the largest mass cancellations in the state’s history last year, with roughly 478,000 inactive voters targeted. Groups like Fair Fight have long warned that such purges fall hardest on Black voters.
Republican officials insist all this is routine list maintenance required by federal law. Some of it is, but the pride with which they make their announcements tells you something has changed. Purging voters is no longer simple database management and information updating. It’s now a loyalty display for a president who still won’t stop wrongfully claiming that hordes of non-citizens are stealing elections (at least the elections he and his party lose).
Another reality when it comes to these Republican-led voter purges is that it’s the same people who always get swept out first: working-class renters who move to new addresses often, young people, shift workers who miss an election or two, immigrants who became citizens. “Use it or lose it” rules don’t hit country club members; they hit people already squeezed by capitalism’s economic crisis.
The Trump administration has supercharged the purge operation. After it expanded the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) citizenship database, at least 67 million voter registrations—mostly from Republican-controlled states—were run through the system. At least 25 states have used it.
The results have been riddled with errors. In Missouri, 70 county clerks from both parties warned lawmakersthat SAVE kept flagging people they personally knew to be citizens. In Travis County, Texas, officials found that between 10% and 21% of voters SAVE flagged as apparent noncitizens were actually citizens.
In June, a U.S. District ruled the revamped database unlawful, writing that the government had trampled Americans’ privacy in a way that threatens “the sacred right to vote.” On Sept. 25, though, the Supreme Court lifted those restrictions, handing Trump a win just weeks before Election Day.
There’s precedent for where this leads. Federal law bars systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election, a quiet period that began Aug. 5 this year. That rule tripped up Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen in 2024, when a judge halted his “non-citizen” purge after about 2,000 eligible citizens were swept up.
In a separate case, the Supreme Court has also agreed to hear a Republican National Committee appeal from Arizona claiming database-driven citizenship checks are exempt. If the GOP wins, experts warn, voters wrongly struck on the eve of an election may have no remedy in federal court.
Commentator Thom Hartmann argues that purges in 2024 helped deliver the White House to Trump, and that Republicans are running the same play now.
The MAGA movement can’t win a fair fight on its record of exploding prices, tariffs, cuts to health care, an inflation-fueling war on Iran, and attacks on workers, so it is trying to shrink the electorate instead.
The answer is organizing. Unions, voting rights groups, and community organizations are urging everyone to check their registration status today, bring a friend to do the same, and know their right to cast a provisional ballot if their name has gone missing.
Republican secretaries of state are proud of how many voters they’ve erased. The best reply is a turnout so big their numbers don’t matter.
No paywalls at People’s World
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
