The GOP’s Weapon of Suppression: Voter Purges Eliza Newlin Carney December 15, 2017 Voter suppression doesn’t always work, as Democrats learned in Alabama, but Republicans will be back—and they have some new tricks up their sleeves. "The nation’s voter lists are notoriously error-riddled, and Levitt acknowledges that maintaining accurate rolls is in everyone’s interests. But cleanup efforts must be careful and precise, says Levitt, who likened the process to surgery. The multi-state “Crosscheck” program championed by Kobach, for example, matches up state voter lists without adequate controls, and misidentifies large numbers of voters as registered in more than one state. A more reputable data sharing project known as the Electronic Registration Information Center allows states to check their records against numerous government databases, resulting in fewer errors.
“It’s the difference between surgery in an operating room with a best-of-class surgeon, and surgery by your neighbor with a chain saw,” says Levitt of the difference between ERIC and Crosscheck. Indiana, one of 30 states to participate in Crosscheck, enacted a law that clears election officials to remove from the rolls anyone flagged by Crosscheck as registered in more than one state, prompting Common Cause Indiana and the ACLU to sue.
Civil rights advocates have also pushed back hard against an intimidation campaign by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group headed by anti-fraud activist J. Christian Adams, who serves on the Kobach commission. His group has sent threatening letters to state election officials, demanding the right to inspect voter rolls that it claims are inaccurate. A coalition of civil rights groups last month set out to counter what it called “an alarming voter purge campaign,” urging election officials to reject the group’s efforts and offering guidance".
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