Although there is little evidence of widespread fraud, The Pew Center found that more than 24 million voter registrations are invalid or inaccurate, and 1.7 million registered voters are dead. Election officials claim that it’s difficult to keep track of people, especially when they move from state to state and death certificates require a process in order to be recognized by voting officials. The large bundle of red tape signifies a need for states to inform one another when a person registers in a new state, but according to Pew, this isn’t happening. They found that in addition to the counted dead voters and invalid registrations, 2.75 million people are registered to vote in more than one state.
In an effort to resolve the overlap problem, Oregon, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Utah and Nevada partnered together to share voter information and databases. Motor vehicle, voter registration, and Social Security records will be shared in order to have more accuracy. Still, the sad fact remains that there are 51 million living, breathing Americans eligible to vote but not registered.
Why aren’t all 50 states required to use this database? What effect would more accurate voter information have on the actual vote outcome?