Critique of NVRA's Impact on Voter Roll Maintenance and Election Integrity

NVRA's Limitations on List Maintenance

• ⚠️ The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) is criticized for setting a low standard for list maintenance, requiring only a reasonable effort to remove ineligible voters.
• 🚫 It fails to mandate the use of crucial data like undeliverable election mail or interstate voter registration data exchange.
• ⏳ The NVRA's restrictive ceiling on removals, particularly the cumbersome confirmation mailing process and the two-federal-general-election waiting period, significantly hinders efficient list maintenance.

State-Level Failures and Bureaucratic Hurdles

• 📉 A comparison of Virginia's voter registration list with the Social Security death file revealed 10,000 deceased registered voters, indicating a failure to follow existing procedures.
• 📊 Audits in states like Maryland have shown state health departments refusing to provide complete death records to election officials, citing unexplained agency policies.
• 🚧 Bureaucratic siloing, finger-pointing between agencies (like DMVs), and a tendency to run list maintenance on autopilot contribute to systemic problems.
• 🔒 States often resist publicly disclosing list maintenance records, making it difficult to uncover and address issues.

Erosion of Consensus on Voter Roll Accuracy

• 🎯 The fundamental principle that only eligible voters should be on the rolls is being challenged, with some groups arguing for the convenience of maintaining multiple out-of-state registrations.
• ⚖️ Laws aimed at preventing duplicate registrations, like one in Montana, have faced lawsuits from progressive groups, highlighting a disagreement on the necessity of clean voter rolls.
• ❓ This lack of consensus on who should be voting and the requirement for residency calls into question the ability to achieve bipartisan agreement on list maintenance practices.

Proposed Reforms for NVRA

• 💡 Congress could require registration forms to include a prior registration address and an acknowledgment that it serves as a cancellation request for previous registrations.
• 🤝 Mandating the transmission of this interstate registration data to previous jurisdictions could lower duplicate registrations and save states money.
• 🗓️ The NVRA's 90-day list maintenance blackout period before federal elections is problematic, especially with same-day registration and provisional balloting; it should be shortened, limited to general elections, or exempt non-citizen removals.