Brought to you by WBIW News and Network Indiana
Last updated on Monday, May 27, 2013
(INDIANAPOLIS) - The secretary of state’s office is taking over responsibility for Indiana’s voter rolls.
County clerks are supposed to check periodically to confirm voters who haven't shown up at the polls for a while still live where they're registered. But not all of them have had the money to do it, with the result that at least nine counties have more registered voters than they have residents of voting age. This year's legislature approved a law assigning the task to Secretary of State Connie Lawson instead.
Lawson says she doesn't have a guess how many invalid registrations there are, but says the last statewide voter cleanup in 2006 purged 300-thousand names from the rolls.
The legislature included two-point-one-million dollars for the effort in the new state budget. Along with the money, Lawson says she'll have the advantage of being able to compare Indiana voter rolls to those of 22 other states participating in a consortium aimed at weeding out duplicate registrations.
Lawson says she'd like to finish the cleanup in time for next year's election, but doesn't know yet whether that's legally or logistically possible. Planning will begin when the new budget takes effect July 1.
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