Dear John,

Democracy is under siege as voter suppression efforts from the right wing take many forms. One of the most pernicious is the indiscriminate purging of millions from the voter rolls.

Often this purging is based on faulty premises, such as a voter not voting in a certain number of previous elections, or inaccurately identifying felony or citizenship status. They are frequently focused on those who are younger, people of color, or unhoused people.

Some purging is accomplished through a practice called voter caging, a technique where right-wing groups send out flyers to targeted areas with high likelihood of voting Democratic, after which any voters whose flyers are returned as undeliverable are reported to be purged.

These threats to our democracy must not go unchallenged. Sign the petition today to tell the Department of Justice to investigate these voter purges and protect the right to vote.

Over 19 million people were removed from voter rolls in just the short time between the 2020 and 2022 elections.

In Georgia, following conservative activists’ challenges of over 80,000 voter names, nearly 189,000 names were removed from the voter rolls in September, representing 2% of the total of registered voters. An additional 82,000 were at risk of being canceled if they did not reply to the state within 40 days. Over 305,000 voters are on an inactive list and will be canceled if they do not vote by 2025.

In Ohio last month, the Republican secretary of state canceled over 26,000 registrations just before a major referendum on abortion rights, and after absentee voting had already begun. There was not enough time for these voters to re-register, if they were even aware of the need to do so.

The Ohio removals were so close to the state election, that if it had been a federal election, they would have been illegal under the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits systematic removal of voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election.

A 2021 study in Wisconsin found that Black voters were more than twice as likely to be removed from the rolls erroneously as white voters.

State by state, the removal of hundreds of thousands of voters who are eligible to vote adds up. These purges take the vote away from eligible citizens and undermine public confidence in elections -- which may be part of the intention of those doing the purging.

Sign the petition: The Department of Justice must intervene to ensure the protection of voting rights now!

Thank you for speaking up for the most fundamental function of a healthy democracy: the right to vote.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action