A Democratic congressional candidate in Alabama is claiming that thousands of voters in her district have been removed from active voter lists.
Mallory Hagan, a former Miss America, is running to represent Alabama’s 3rd Congressional District, said Thursday that more than 55,000 voters have been disqualified or labeled inactive since February 2017, according to numbers her campaign obtained and reported by The Associated Press.
{mosads}Hagan is not accusing the state of any malfeasance, but said the figure is worrisome to her campaign.
“Across the country, voters are seeing their rights slip through their fingers,” Hagan said, according to the news agency. “According to our most recent findings, more than one in 10 voters here in east Alabama have been removed from the active voter rolls.”
In response, Hagan created a committee of lawyers that will offer aid to voters. Her campaign is also planning to have a hotline through which voters can call and report concerns.
“They purge voters, we register them,” Hagan tweeted on Friday. She is vying to unseat 16-year incumbent Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) in November’s midterm election.
The AP noted that Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said in 2017 that 340,162 people were placed on inactive voter status throughout the state due to a mandated update of voting rolls.
“They’ve just been placed on the inactive list, which means before they can vote they have to fill out the updated form,” Merrill said.
The secretary of state added that people were labeled inactive after a mailed registration card was returned as undeliverable and after an individual failed to reply to a second forwarded postcard seeking an updated address. Merrill said inactive voters can vote on Election Day, but must update their registration first.
The AP noted that the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter to Merrill last year prior to the state’s Senate race, voicing concerns that some voters might have been falsely designated inactive.
An APM Reports analysis released Friday revealed that Georgia officials removed an estimated 107,000 people from voter rolls because they decided not to vote in prior elections.
Such laws, generally enacted by Republican governments, have grown increasingly common, with at least nine states now having them, according to APM Reports.