Summer Purge: 3% of South Dakota Voters Disappear
August was voter purge month, when the Secretary of State knocks voters who haven’t showed up at the polls recently from “Active” to “Inactive.” The September 1, 2017, South Dakota voter registration tally shows 11,762 voters—2.14% of the August 1 total—removed from Active status and 11,450 newly Inactive voters. This one-month purge restocks the Inactive pool, which the Secretary of State has whittled down over the last 18 months from a March 2016 peak of 54,708 to an August 2017 low of 30,619. Inactives now total 42,069.
The total number of voters on the books, Active + Inactive, actually increased from the general election through June 2017 from 595,126 to 597,856, thanks to increased voter registration. That total is now back down to 579,544. Thus, in three months, the Secretary of State managed to scrub 3.06% of the names on the voter rolls.
Looking just at Active voters and using the 2.14% August purge rate as the baseline, Democrats got purged harder than Republicans:
Party 9/1/2017 change since Aug 1 change since 2016 general election change since Dem peak Jul 2009
Democrats 163,830 –2.63% –4.02% –20.50%
Republicans 249,085 –1.87% –1.20% +2.60%
Independents 121,641 –2.01% +2.50% +40.94%
Total Active 537,475 –2.14% –1.28% +0.17%
I have no more detailed data upon which to make conclusions, but the greater drop for Democrats in the August purge may be explained by these hypotheses:
Read more: http://dakotafreepress.com/2017/09/02/summer-purge-3-of-south-dakota-voters-disappear/
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