It’s very interesting watching the voting irregularities in NYC right now with entire blocks of voters purged. It’s unknown why or how this happened; the mayor has ordered all previous voter rolls reinstated, which is good, in a sense. A lot of people will be screaming about purges but what they don’t understand is that purges are there to protect the integrity of the process. If you don’t vote in two federal election cycles, you become an inactive voter and then, can (and should) be removed. People move, people die … leaving a name on the rolls for long periods of time, especially in larger cities that are transient, opens up the process for easy manipulation and fraud, especially in places that don’t require identification to vote (even though you need an ID to cash a check for a penny) and with people who know how to game the system in tight elections. With 100 people in a large city like Boston, you can steal the mayor’s race; with a few hundred, you can steal a Senate seat. Don’t want to be purged? Vote in every election, fill out the Census form, whenever you get anything in the mail from a local government, answer it, and you’ll never be removed. If you don’t want to fill out the forms, take a moment and go down to the clerk’s office months before the election and make sure you’re still on the rolls. It’s all pretty simple.
Check out this piece I wrote in February 2003: Vote fraud, conspiracies, and real solutions to the elections problem