State Election Board Performing Inactive Voter Purge

The Oklahoma State Election Board is preparing to purge voter rolls across the state in April. 

It’s a 25-year-old state practice that’s part of state law.

The purge takes place in the spring of every odd numbered year, the goal is to identify inactive voters.

Once an inactive voter has been identified and sent an address confirmation request in the mail, they are still eligible to vote. However, if a person flagged as inactive, does not respond to the confirmation, and fails to vote for two consecutive general elections, they may be removed from the rolls.

State Election Board Staff say maintaining clean rolls is important, and there's a multilayer process to become what's called an inactive voter.

State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax explains, “There are seven different reason reasons a voter would be sent an address confirmation mailing, it could be they are sent a voter registration card for example it comes back as undeliverable for the address they are registered, it could be somebody that surrendered their drivers license in another state one of those seven reasons is not voting for 2 consecutive General Election cycles.”

Inactive voters who are registered and participate in casting a ballot can be placed back on the active voter roll

State Election Board members say they will have a better idea of when voters will be deleted from the rolls sometime between April 15 through the 19th, the scheduled week the removal should occur.