Hacker News Reader

Comment by coryodaniel | Hacker News Reader

How does the purging actually work? Is there sole evil republican henchman with database access? Is there no oversight into what is actually purged?

Trapped behind the paywall.

View on HN

I got the letters that my voter registration was going to be purged, but I left Ohio like 7 years ago at that point and hadn't voted since I left. I had actually looked into de-registering way back when but it required filling out a form and physically mailing it, so I didn't bother.

Edit: Also I was slightly impressed that they found my current mailing address. I've moved like 6 times across several states, since I left Ohio.

The Secretary of State is Republican, and surprise, the GOP pursues policies that restrict the ballot in a way that benefits them and disadvantages Democrats.

Ohio is a state where the GOP holds 75% of federal House seats despite winning only 50% of the vote. Similar effect holds for the state legislative offices

80% of 235,000 is 188,000. Your argument is that it is okay to keep 188,000 invalid voters on the books because otherwise the republicans might win? Don't you see how fraudulent or no-longer-active voter registrations may bring about questions of legitimacy? 188,000 is no small number of people. Trump won Ohio with a smaller margin.

If the state can't put together a list that doesn't disenfranchise one in every five voters on it, it shouldn't bother.

Voter fraud is a non-existent issue and these mass-removals serve no basis except as cover to remove voters that don't support their party.

You don't think removing dead or moved voters is important? This is not about voter fraud. This is just about keeping your records in order, and making sure no one can raise suspicions about your electoral mechanisms.

Unless the state has an effective mechanism that doesn't disenfranchise voters, and that those moved or dead voters aren't voting, the motives are suspect.

> the motives are suspect.

Um, no they're not. Simply wanting to maintain a clean record is a personality difference that it is unreasonable to get suspicious over given the varying personalities of the various secretaries of state (the one who ultimately decides such policies).

It's not unreasonable when the party they're a part of has a long history of disenfranchising voters to gain an electoral edge.

Removing dead or moved voters is much, much less important than making sure that valid voters can still vote.

Can you explain why? If any voter is found to have voted twice (even by accident), then that voter will be disenfranchised. So -- as happened to me -- if a state mails your ballot to an old address and someone votes there (even inadvertently), the states may decide to void both ballots (even the valid one cast by you) to prevent double voting. This means it's incredibly important to get rid of old registrations and keep things up to date. Of course, care should be taken to ensure valid voters can vote, too. But, I mean, it looks like that's what happened here. At no point were the 235,000 voters identified banned from voting. The process seem to have worked as it should, and the valid voter registrations are preserved, while the old ones are being removed. Isn't that an example of things working?

Because double-voting is a very rare thing, while disenfranchising 50k voters in a single purge could easily swing an election in a competitive race.

Purging is a legal requirement in all 50 states. Dead voters, those who've moved, and those who are ineligible (felons) must be removed. Red states like Ohio are criminally over-zealous and remove poor people. Blue states like Michigan are criminally under-zealous and have more voters on the rolls than people living in the state.

I don't understand how this has turned into a political issue. Everyone should want expired, duplicate, or downright fraudulent voter registrations removed, while keeping those who are eligible on the books. What a sad state of affairs we are in.

It's a political issue because one party uses it as an excuse to remove active voters of the other party, and the other party rightfully objects to this.

That's a pretty bad take.

The other half the story is that the Dems object to every cleanup and always claim the Republicans are trying to suppress votes, but never have any suggestions on how to do it better, only "don't do it now" or "do it after the next election" in perpetuity. That's how blue states like Michigan end up with court orders requiring them to do cleanups (court orders which Michigan is violating).

> blue states like Michigan

Both houses of Michigan's state legislature have been Republican-controlled since 2011. Not much of an example of the Dems controlling voter rolls at the state level there.

The governor is the primary responsible party for executing a court mandate, not the legislature. Is the governor republican?

It was a republican between 2011 and 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Snyder

Well, my example pre-dates 2011, but that's hardly the point. The point is that Democrats object to legally mandated purging and cry foul regardless of whether or not the purging is fair. The Republicans sometimes deserve to look like the bad guys, but sometimes, they are just doing the proper legally mandated thing and get called the bad guys anyways.

>> Trapped behind the paywall.

While the site it loading, just hit the escape key.

Any tricks for mobile?

Use Firefox mobile and install any of the paywall bypass plugins that work on the desktop version.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com