OLYMPIA – More than 176,000 names were removed from the state’s voting rolls last year under a new statewide voter database that was developed to help counties find duplicate registrations and dead voters, Secretary of State Sam Reed said Tuesday.
The purge of illegal registrations is the result of the new system that consolidated all 39 separate county systems into one database in January 2006.
Reed said that from Jan. 1, 2006 to Dec. 31, 176,373 names were removed from the state’s database of about 3.2 million registered voters:
* 39,814 duplicate voter registrations. Reed said these often happen when a voter moves across county lines, forgets to notify the local election office and then reregisters somewhere else. Under the new database, screenings for duplicate registrations are automatically conducted each day, and reports of duplicate registrations are generated for the counties. The counties confirm each record before canceling the duplicate registration.
* 40,105 deceased voter registrations. The database searches daily for names of deceased voters against databases from the Department of Health and the Social Security Master Death Index.
* 4,500 felon voter registrations. A screening for the names of felons is conducted quarterly, using a list from the Department of Corrections to identify possible matches and notices from County Clerks to County Auditors. Potential matches generated from the Department of Corrections list receive a notification letter, giving the person 30 days to respond.
* 91,954 active and inactive voter registrations, because voters move to other states or requested cancellations of their voter registrations.
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