The speaker is Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie M. Gorbea, who, according to the Providence Journal, “has identified roughly 150,000 people erroneously on the state’s voters rolls and has begun to clean them up.”
“Nearly 65,000 names have been removed since Gorbea took office in 2015,” the article goes on to note, “and another 30,000 have been marked as ‘inactive,’ a first step toward removing them.”
And a positive first step at that.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
But let’s go back to that title quote, which at the very least is disingenuous. Even if we concede it’s “just an inaccuracy,” 150,000 is a pretty big inaccuracy for a state with a population just over a million.
And then there’s the question of how she knows that 150,000 erroneous names are just that out of carelessness.
“When people move, especially when it’s not near an election, people often forget to tell voter registration officials that they’re gone,” she is quoted as saying.
But 15% of the state’s residents relocating would represent a mass exodus. In any event, it doesn’t happen to be the case. According to Census data, Rhode Island’s population has remained fairly constant over the past two decades.
Gorbea laments that removing names from the voter rolls is a cumbersome process, noting the state’s “strict protections on how and when you can remove people from the voter rolls.” But the question here is not really how difficult it is to remove a name but, rather, how easy it is to add one.
Perhaps Gorbea’s reluctance to entertain the possibility that some of these names were added fraudulently has to do with her political affiliation: She is a Democrat.
Whatever the case, the situation in Rhode Island is another strong argument on behalf of voter IDs. But don’t hold your breath.
