Missouri bill would enable investigations, removal of inactive voters from rolls

Missouri lawmakers weighed at a hearing Monday a bill that would remove people from voter rolls after several years of inactivity.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, states that if registered voters do not engage in voter activity for two consecutive calendar years, the local election authority will investigate their qualifications and include them in the next canvass.

A canvass could utilize a number of ways to reach voters, including by mail, house-to-house, the U.S. Postal Service or through the National Change of Address database.

If the election authorities don’t hear back from the voter and they don’t vote in the next two general elections, which happen every two years, then they would become eligible to be taken off the list of registered voters under the proposed legislation.

“We can always make this process better to ensure that the integrity of our vote is protected at all costs. And that’s what this does,” Brattin said. “It’s not disenfranchising voters, even though many will say that it is.”

Lobbyists and voting rights groups representatives that spoke against the bill at the Local Government and Elections Committee hearing mostly had one common message: just because someone has not voted in a long time does not mean they should be ousted from the voter roll.

Denise Lieberman, the director and general counsel for the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, an advocacy group focused on ensuring free and fair elections, said in an interview that these targeted investigations would fall mostly on young voters, people of color, low income voters, the elderly and people with disabilities.

“What this will do is further marginalize citizens who are already marginalized from the voting process,” Lieberman said. “This will perpetuate low voter turnout.”

All of the known barriers to voting like transportation, childcare and long work hours also contribute to people only voting in presidential elections, Lieberman said.

“People for whom voting is already very, very difficult, tend to be the voters that are only going to exert that effort during a presidential election year. But they’re still valid voters,” Lieberman said.

According to data from the Missouri Secretary of State’s website, the voter turnout rate increases by several points during presidential election years, but drops off during midterm elections. In the 2020 presidential election, about 1 million more people in Missouri voted compared to the 2022 election.

Even if someone has not moved, they can still be kicked off of the voter roll if they do not respond to a mailed notice, inform the election authority of their address, or the authorities do not receive sufficient evidence to return them to the voter roll, according to the bill.

Lieberman also pointed out that they are already facing hiccups with people removed from voter rolls. A piece of legislation passed last year got rid of the deadline for updating someone’s address on their voter registration if they moved within Missouri. This meant that voters could change their address on the day of an election.

However, Lieberman said this year she worked with multiple Missourians who were kicked off of their voter rolls after moving and were unable to change their address to vote because they were technically nonvoters and only Missouri voters can update their registration at any point.

She said she is concerned that this bill would thwart the good intentions of that legislation.

Supporters of the bill included a GOP committee chairman from Camden County and representative from Missouri Canvassers, a volunteer group that focuses on assessing who voted after elections to determine if they were fair and accurate. They said that locally, cleaned up voter rolls would be immensely helpful for accurate elections. They said that robust systems for maintaining up-to-date information about voters is needed in Missouri.