Here & Now

What Does it Mean to Clean Milwaukee's Voter Rolls?

Frederica Freyberg:

City of Milwaukee election officials sounded the alarm over voters deactivated from lists of registered voters this year and then after hearing from the city, the state elections commission agreed to reactivate all voters purged from the rolls. Marisa Wojcik gives us the numbers.

Marisa Wojcik:
Last week, the Wisconsin Elections Commission agreed to reactivate thousands of Milwaukee voters purged from the rolls. The removal process happened after the commission attempted last year to clean up the list of registered voters in the state. A common practice done to make sure that poll books are up-to-date. 308,000 voter registrations statewide were removed when the commission did not receive a reply to a postcard sent to the voter asking them to update their address in order to remain registered. A database called the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC, was used to review Wisconsin’s list of registered voters. The system is a multi-state partnership that cross-references voter data with records from the Department of Motor Vehicles and U.S. Postal Service. ERIC helped update more than 25,000 registration address in 2017 and 2018. The problem is that not all of this data is reliable. The state identified 12,000 people that were inactivated because of inaccuracies in DMV and postal records. Unreliable data is concerning to the city of Milwaukee, which saw 44,400 of its voters purged from the rolls and some removed in error. Supplemental poll lists were created before elections earlier this year in an effort to rectify these errors. This isn’t is the first time Milwaukee has had its books purged in a major way. In 2008, before the state used an electronic method of updating voter records, the county had the highest such rate in the country, when 34% of its voters were removed. This is according to a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice that identifies a national trend of increased purging practices. The report states that while no one disputes the rolls should be accurate, voters should be protected from wrongful purges. For these and other fast fact, visit wpt.org.

Frederica Freyberg:
That was Marisa Wojcik reporting. We check in now with the executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission. Neil Albrecht joins us from Milwaukee. Thanks very much for doing so.

Neil Albrecht:
Well, thanks for having me, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:
The Wisconsin Elections Commission will reactivate voters removed from Milwaukee’s registered voters list, but how many is that?

Neil Albrecht:
We’ve spoken with the Wisconsin Elections Commission just today, in fact, and their intent is to reactivate around 34,000 records. So of the 44,400 that were initially deactivated as part of this process, they estimate — and this appears accurate to us — that about 10,000 of those individuals have already re-registered at new addresses, either in Milwaukee or somewhere in the state of Wisconsin. And so the balance is what the state is going to reactivate.

Frederica Freyberg:
And why did you ask for them to do that?

Neil Albrecht:
It was very concerning to us, beginning with the February primary this year, which would have been the first election since the state began the ERIC data maintenance process. We were seeing an increasing number of voters appearing at polling places whose records had been deactivated, but who still resided at their same addresses. In fact, in the February primary, which was a pretty low turnout in the city of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin, we had 100 people appear at our polling places whose records had been deactivated. This was immediately concerning to us. We had been monitoring the voter registration data pretty closely. And so we notified the state. We sent that list of voters to the state so that they could analyze the data.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are examples of how voters could have been removed from voter rolls in error because of this electronic process or ERIC?

Neil Albrecht:
We can only speak to our experience in the city of Milwaukee. But what we’ve heard from voters would be, for example, if someone registers a vehicle at another address. For example, they have a child who goes away to college, takes a vehicle with them and then they register that vehicle at that address. The DMV was flagging those records as a reliable indicator that the person had actually moved. Another example was the post office, individuals that had temporary forwards on their mail, for example, snowboarders or just somebody traveling for work for an extended period of time, the post office flagged those records, again, as a reliable indicator that those individuals had moved.

Frederica Freyberg:
And yet the intent of voter roll maintenance is a good thing in your mind; is that right?

Neil Albrecht:
Oh, absolutely. We support the intent. But I think there is one important way to view what occurred and that is if we were looking at the performance of a voting machine and it read 99 of 100 ballots correctly but didn’t read that 100th ballot correctly, I don’t think that would be acceptable to the minds of any person, including elected officials in the state of Wisconsin. And that’s really what we saw with the ERIC process. It absolutely did a lot of good in terms of deactivating voters who have moved, but to erroneously deactivate voters that have not moved, who are still residing at their addresses, and then may have to register again on election day, that’s an end not justified by the means.

Frederica Freyberg:
Because that can constitute some difficulty for people to have to register on election day, having thought, perhaps, that they were already on the books.

Neil Albrecht:
Absolutely. There is a backdrop to all of this, which is registration laws in Wisconsin have changed significantly over the last decade. And what we’re really seeing is some of the racial and economic disparities that exist in our society permeate voting in terms of a lot of people in poverty, which is largely represented by people of color in the city of Milwaukee, are being disproportionately affected by these voting changes. And so the effect of ERIC and the assumption that a person would be able to re-register on election day isn’t really an accurate assumption. Many people struggle with the proof of residence requirement to be able to register.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do you feel as though, just briefly with about a half a minute left, that the state’s reactivating these lists in Milwaukee will help public confidence going forward?

Neil Albrecht:
I think so. I believe so. I think it’s unfortunate that this occurred. I wish more had been done to vet the data prior, because I believe this has compromised public trust in the voter registration database. But I’m hopeful that the public will hear the outcome and will — this will be able to reestablish their trust in the integrity of elections.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Well, Neil Albrecht, thanks very much for joining us and explaining all of this.

Neil Albrecht:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
As for how the Wisconsin Elections Commission plans to deal with removing people from voter rolls, like the process of sending them a postcard to notify them and then requesting voters respond to the state that they haven’t actually changed their address, Public Information Officer Reid Magney tells us this, “In the future we’re going to reevaluate what we do with information from ERIC about people who may have moved, and any future mailings are on hold for now.”