What is the difference between when Republicans who are compliant with the Trump administration manage state voter rolls, and when Democrats manage state voter rolls? It’s the difference between taking Donald Trump’s claims about the number of noncitizens on voter rolls at face value and cancelling hundreds of thousands of registrations of American citizens, versus demanding proof from the Trump administration before removing anyone from the rolls.
Before going further, please remember that you can help fight back against the Trump administration’s attempts to meddle with voter rolls in all 50 states by supporting the Democracy Legal Defense Fund operated by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. You donation to this fund goes directly to the legal fight against Trump administration election interference.
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In 16 states around the country, all run by Republicans, state election officials complied with Trump administration demands to turn over their nearly unredacted voter rolls, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Alaska, which has a crucial U.S. Senate election this year, was one of those 16 states.
What happened in Alaska
In the Last Frontier State, not long after state officials sent their voter rolls to the Trump administration, the Alaska Division of Elections cancelled 3,048 voter registrations, or about 1 in every 200 files on the rolls. After state officials cancelled the registrations, they sent letters to the addresses associated with those files, letting those impacted know of their change in status. Here is what happened next:
“Approximately 685 voters have contacted the Division and stated they are citizens, despite the inconsistency with the DMV’s records,” Carol Beecher, the division’s director, said in a letter addressed to the chairs of the Alaska House Judiciary Committee and the Alaska State Affairs Committee.
Beecher also said “more than 100 people have reported they are not citizens and requested that their voter registration be cancelled.”
About 350 letters were returned as undeliverable, and another 1,900 affected Alaskans have not responded at all.
By about a 6 to 1 ratio, it appears that Alaska cancelled the voter registrations of actual citizens, rather than only cancelling the registrations of noncitizens. As I wrote last Saturday, extrapolating from the responses they received, by adopting the Trump administration’s “cancel voter registrations first, ask questions later” approach, the Alaska Division of Elections may have cancelled the registrations of as many as 2,000 citizens in order to root out the registrations of roughly 300 noncitizens.
Alaska, being a small state, is just the tip of the iceberg. Across the other 15 states that have been compliant with the Trump administration, which includes the very large states of Texas and Florida, this same approach may have led to the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations of American citizens, and far fewer cancellations of noncitizens.
What happened in Nevada and Pennsylvania
Now, let’s compare what happened in Alaska to what happened in a couple of states that did not comply with the Trump administration’s demand to turn over their nearly unredacted voter rolls: Nevada and Pennsylvania.
In Nevada, where the secretary of state is Democrat Cisco Aguilar, state election officials demanded proof from the Trump administration before removing anyone from the rolls. As a result, they were able to force the Trump administration to massively revise downward their claim of the number noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls:
DHS initially announced it had found close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list. But a DHS official acknowledged in the meeting with Nevada officials that number was “the ceiling” and each voter still had to be manually reviewed. Then, a day later, DHS provided the state with a list of 185 ID numbers pertaining to voters the agency said it was confident were noncitizens. NPR acquired records and a recording of the video call, first reported by The New York Times, via a public record request.
Something similar happened in Pennsylvania, where the secretary of state (technically Secretary of the Commonwealth) is Democrat Al Schmidt. The Trump administration came to Pennsylvania election officials with an inflated claim of the number of noncitizens, but demurred when asked for proof. From NPR:
NPR has confirmed that officials in Pennsylvania had a similar call with DHS after Trump’s allegations in July, but the state has not received a smaller list of potential noncitizens from the federal government.
“It was clear that DHS did not have confidence that the numbers they have stated publicly were accurate,” said an official with knowledge of the meeting in Pennsylvania, who did not have permission to speak publicly. Should DHS provide credible proof, the official said the state would notify law enforcement and work to remove unlawful voters from the voter list.
This is the key difference. Democratic secretaries of state are demanding proof from the Trump administration before summarily cancelling tens of thousands of voter registrations. By contrast, many Republican state officials are taking the Trump administration’s figures at face value and engaging in a “cancel first, ask questions later” approach that has likely resulted in the cancellation the registrations of hundreds of thousands American citizens across 16 states.
This is why it matters that Democrats control state election offices. If you think this is worth fighting for, and would like to help out, please consider supporting the Democracy Legal Defense Fund operated by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. You donation to this fund goes directly to the legal fight against Trump administration election interference.
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