I am pleased to announce that Illinois does not lead the country in the number of counties in which there are more registered voters than there are living people:
(Alexandria, VA) – August 27. The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has put 141 counties on notice across the United States that they have more registered voters than people alive. PILF has sent 141 statutory notice letters to county election officials in 21 states. The letters are a prerequisite to bringing a lawsuit against those counties under Section 8 of the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
The letters inform the target counties that it appears they are violating the NVRA because they are not properly maintaining the voter rolls. The NVRA, (also known as Motor Voter) requires state and local election officials to properly maintain voter rolls and ensure that only eligible voters are registered to vote. Having more registrants than eligible citizens alive indicates that election officials have failed to properly maintain voter rolls.
States with counties which received a notice letter are (# of counties): Michigan (24), Kentucky (18), Illinois (17), Indiana (11), Alabama (10), Colorado (10), Texas (9), Nebraska (7), New Mexico (5), South Dakota (5), Kansas (4), Mississippi (4), Louisiana (3), West Virginia (3), Georgia (2), Iowa (2), Montana (2), North Carolina (2), Arizona, Missouri, New York (1 each). Federally produced data show the letter recipients have more registrants than living eligible citizens alive. (A sample letter can be found here.)
I am further pleased to note that Cook County is not one of those counties, despite its reputation. However, Sangamon County, the county that contains Springfield, the state capital, is.
. . . because Chicagoans who do significant business in Capital City buy second homes, once they realize that the median home price is about $110k. My favorite story of this nature is the state representative who was enticed to buy the upper floors in a downtown building to stay during sessions. He ended up calling noise complaints to the _state_ police about the bar on the first floor, with a sort of “do you know who I am” attitude that led the responder to think the Governor would appreciate action. The DJ fled the bar after being confronted with an excessive show of force to the wax he spun. And news teams picked up the investigation, which uncovered multiple building code violations at another downtown building owned by the state rep., which the city felt obligated to resume beating the bush on.
There is no moral here, just another politician or lobbyist buying relatively cheap property with no idea of what they are doing. They no doubt double-register. I can only hope the good Lord sees fit to send such a buyer my way when the time comes.
I’m a bit surprised to see Texas and Arizona on the list with that many counties. I’m kind of surprised that Florida ISN’T on the list. A problem that got a little attention from local papers from 2001 to 2003 was the discovery that a lot of registered voters down here (especially in south Florida) were also registered voters in places like NY and NJ – and had apparently voted in both states in 2000’s presidential election. Oops.
Oh well, who cares? It’s not like voting really matters any more.
Interestingly, plural registration does not seem to be a violation of the Illinois voting code, 10 ILCS 5. I’m not sure how election officials would be able to detect illegal plural voting under those circumstances but it doesn’t seem to be against the law.
The majority of excess registrations is due to death, or people moving away, not fraud. However, it is important to maintain accurate records. One way is to have registration expire if the person hasn’t voted in the last few elections.