Inactive Voters To Be Purged From Oklahoma Voter Rolls

Tuesday, April 2nd 2019, 5:26 am

By: Joseph Holloway

The State Election Board is preparing to purge voter rolls across the Oklahoma later this month.

This process is nothing new, and the state has done it for 25 years.

The purge happens in the spring of every odd numbered year and the goal is to find inactive voters.

Once an inactive voter has been identified and the address confirmation mailer is sent, they are still eligible to vote, but they may be removed if that person does not vote, does not respond to the mailer and does not vote for two consecutive general elections

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

State Election Board Secretary, Paul Ziriax, says "There are seven different 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 two consecutive general election cycles."

Inactive voters who are registered and cast a ballot can be placed back on the active voter roll.

Election Board members say they will have a better idea of when voters will be deleted from the rolls sometime between April 15th through 19th, which is when those voters would be removed.