INSTITUTE INDEX: Alarm over voter purge rates in Southern states
Voter purge rates, with higher rates in darker counties. The Florida map looks at purge rates between December 2016 and September 2018, while the Georgia and North Carolina maps look at rates between Sept. 7, 2016 and Sept. 14, 2018. (Maps from the Brennan Center for Justice.)
Year in which the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in an Alabama case titled Shelby County v. Holder that gutted the Voting Rights Act by ending federal preclearance requirements for states that had historically engaged in voter discrimination, leading to, among other things, a jump in voter-roll purges — efforts to remove dead or ineligible voters that sometimes snare the eligible: 2013
Percent increase in names purged from states' voter rolls between the 2006-2008 pre-Shelby period and the 2014-2016 post-Shelby period, with a surge in Southern states no longer subject to federal preclearance: 33
Estimated additional number of voter names removed from the rolls over that period due to a jump in purge rates in former preclearance states: 2 million
Median percent-purged rate among Florida counties from November 2008 to November 2010: 0.2
From 2012 to 2014: 3.6
From December 2016 to September 2018: more than 7
In North Carolina, where 40 of 100 counties had been subject to preclearance, the jump in the average percent-purged rate from 2010 to 2014: 8 to 8.8
Percent of registered voters purged from the rolls in North Carolina between September 2016 and May 2018: 11.7
Of North Carolina's 100 counties, number where voters of color were overrepresented in the purged group: 90
Increase in Georgia's median percent-purged rate from 2010 to 2014, a period that straddled Shelby: 6.7 to 10.7
Georgia's rate over the past two years, with nonwhite voters overrepresented among those purged: 10.6
During that time, number of Georgia counties where the purge rate exceeded 15 percent: 4*
Date on which the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rainbow-PUSH Coalition, Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, and New Georgia Project announced they were planning to join a federal lawsuit filed by investigative journalist Greg Palast against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp over that state's voter purges: 10/2/2018
Number of voters' names whose removal from the rolls Palast says Kemp — the current Republican nominee for Georgia governor — oversaw in the last two years: as many as 700,000
Number of Georgia voters' names Palast says were removed from the rolls without notice in 2017 alone, with a database of those names now available to check online: 591,000
Number of other states where Palast is currently seeking voter purge lists through lawsuits: 26
Date by which Georgians who discover they've been improperly stricken from the rolls need to re-register in order to vote on Nov. 6: 10/9/2018
Date by which improperly purged Floridians must re-register: 10/9/2018
Date on which North Carolina's normal registration period ends, though it's been extended by three days in counties declared disaster areas after Hurricane Florence, and though citizens there can also take advantage of same-day registration during the early voting period that begins Oct. 17: 10/12/2018
Number of other Southern states with same-day voter registration: 0
* Camden, Chattahoochee, Dade, and Liberty.
(Click on figure to go to source.)
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Sue Sturgis
Sue is the former editorial director of Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies.