'Phantoms' bloat voter rolls

Tens of thousands of former residents and dead voters are bloating voter rolls in Delaware, despite the purging of 72,000 from the registry over the last three years.

Around the country, errors in voter lists can lead to lines at the polls on Election Day, as well as vulnerability to fraud, experts say. But cleaning up voter rolls is a never-ending task.

"Twenty to 30 percent of Americans move within a year, and people in charge of voter rolls can have a really hard keeping track of that," said John Lindback, executive director of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which works to improve voter registration and the accuracy of voter files.

Some math can help explain: Delaware has roughly 655,800 adult citizens, and 73.3 percent of them are registered to vote, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That suggests Delaware's central voter registry would have somewhere around 480,700 entries.

But it counts 160,000 more voters than that – roughly 642,000, according to a tally last week from election officials. New Castle County actually has more voters on its rolls, 389,120, than the Census Bureau says are eligible based on age, 387,550.

How's that happen? Part of the problem is phantom voters: People who have stopped voting, died or moved away, but remain on voting rolls anyway, officials say. Federal rules make it difficult to remove them.

Identifying outdated or inaccurate records requires regular monitoring and vigilance by election authorities, as well as safeguards to ensure eligible voters aren't purged erroneously, state officials said.

"That's really the answer. People don't tell us they've moved," Delaware Election Commissioner Elaine Manlove said. "We also get a lot of duplicates."

For instance, two voters are often created in the registry when a woman changes her name due to marriage or divorce, she said. It's also possible that someone forgets they are already registered and does so again, with a slight variation in the record.

Inflated lists waste taxpayer and candidates' money to send mailings to voters who aren't around. The inaccurate tally also deflates voter-turnout rates, which are typically calculated as a percentage of registered voters, Lindback said.

Voters who are registered at old addresses risk showing up at the wrong polling location, and create extra work for poll workers on Election Day.

While instances of fraud are rare, dual registrations in more than one state introduces the possibility of voting twice. Also, removing the names of the deceased from rolls is protection against people fraudulently impersonating a dead voter at the polls, Lindback said.

"That instance is exceptional and rare, but it's a perception problem," he said. "You want, from a public perception point, those rolls to be as clean as possible."

Federal election rules generally require states to keep voters on the rolls long after they quit voting.

"It protects their right to vote," Lindback said. "If you're an inactive voter, you aren't taken off the list. It just means the local election board doesn't know where you live anymore."

Delaware may not remove voters until it has gotten two pieces of returned mail from them, and the voter has failed to vote in two general elections, Manlove said. The process can take years, unless election officials locate a newer, working address for the inactive voter.

That's where the ERIC consortium can help. Founded in 2012, ERIC enables its 11 member states, including Delaware and Maryland, to compare voter and motor-vehicle databases with one another, protecting sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, Lindback said.

Begun as a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, ERIC uses a sophisticated identity-matching software, which also cross-references the data against a database of all deaths reported to the Social Security Administration. It will soon begin also comparing the data with a national U.S. Postal Service change-of-address registry, Lindback said.

ERIC then sends Delaware a list of cross-state matches (20,400 total since 2012), as well as movers within the state (41,688 in the same period) and duplicates (589).

Delaware election officials can then send a notice to the voter to start the removal process, urging those out of state to cancel their registration.

"We get 10 to 11 post-office bins full of cards returned 'undeliverable' after an election," said Howard G. Sholl Jr., deputy director of elections in New Castle County. "In the past, they'd just sit there for two general elections before we can do anything with them. ERIC allows us to actually reach out to them at their new address."

Sholl's office has had an average 30 to 40 percent response rate to those mailings, he said.

If there's no response, the voter is not purged but added to the inactive voter list, which is currently 38,000 voters long, Manlove said. "We don't take people off just because they came back on an ERIC list," she said.

In Delaware, inactive voters have the same rights as others, and can show up on Election Day to vote. Poll workers must first confirm the registration.

If a voter's name appears in the Social Security death index, Delaware won't purge the voter until confirming the fatality with a second source, such as an obituary, the state health department, or Ancestry.com, which collects death notices, Manlove said.

Her office also recently gained access to a national registry of death notices through the State and Territorial Exchange of Vital Events (STEVE), she said.

About 10 years ago, state election officials conducted a voter purge after trying to match state data against the Social Security records. But there were errors, with a few of the purged voters showing up at the polls on the next Election Day, Manlove said.

"Our matching software is more advanced, so ERIC is able to find literally thousands more matches," Lindback said.

ERIC also provides members with a list of eligible but unregistered citizens, so that state officials can write and urge them to sign up. Delaware sent notices to more than 25,000 on this list in 2012, and another 4,700 this year, Manlove said. The bulk of new registrations occur through the Division of Motor Vehicles.

The process of identifying duplicates and other irregularities in Delaware's voter database became more complicated since the state dropped a requirement that voters provide a Social Security number when registering. Voters are now assigned a voter ID number instead, Manlove said.

This can make it hard to decipher between individuals with identical names, save for generational titles such as senior, junior, III, etc., she said. Voters can always voluntarily provide a SSN, Manlove said.

Maintaining a complete and accurate voter roll will become easier as more states join ERIC – especially larger states such as Pennsylvania and Florida, said Manlove, who sits on ERIC's board. It costs $25,000 to join, plus annual dues to help fund ERIC's operations.

A plus for list-maintenance efforts in Delaware came in May when it became possible to file a change of address form completely online, Manlove said. Voters can register and update their info at ivote.de.gov. It will likely cut the cost of processing manual registration forms, and reduce errors in reading poor handwriting.

The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 4 election was Oct. 11.

Contact Melissa Nann Burke at (302) 324-2329, mburke@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @nannburke.

DELAWARE VOTERS BY THE NUMBERS

ESTIMATED POPULATION: 900,131

VOTING-AGE CITIZENS: 655,782

VOTER TURNOUT IN 2012: 412,620

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Delaware State Election Commissioner