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MONTGOMERY, Alabama --- Less than three months before the June primary, four Alabama counties had more voters on their rolls than what the Census Bureau says is their voting age population.

Officials give a number of reasons for that, including under-counting by the census.

Secretary of State Jim Bennett said the discrepancies create opportunity for voting fraud.

“Every duplicate name and every bad address is just an opportunity for crooks to attempt to manipulate our elections,” Bennett said.

Each county has a three-person board of registrars that is responsible for maintaining the voting lists with help from the secretary of state’s office.

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The county boards receive notification when a person dies, registers in another county, gets a driver’s license in another state or is convicted of a disqualifying felony. The county boards are responsible for removing names from the list.

As of March, Greene, Wilcox, Lowndes and Macon counties had more active, registered voters than what the census estimated as their 18-and-older population in 2012.

Active voters are those who have not been placed on inactive status. That happens when the periodic update cards from county boards are returned as undeliverable, or if they don’t vote for four years (two federal election cycles).

County Total Registered Voters Total Active Adult Population, 2012 Voters per adult Active voters per adult LOWNDES 10,236 9,585 8,540 1.199 1.122 GREENE 7,327 7,224 6,859 1.068 1.053 MACON 17,341 17,071 16,934 1.024 1.008 WILCOX 8,930 8,573 8,567 1.042 1.001 HALE 11,974 11,820 11,851 1.010 0.997 WASHINGTON 13,172 12,636 13,008 1.013 0.971 PERRY 8,395 7,701 7,954 1.055 0.968 CONECUH 10,034 9,744 10,169 0.987 0.958 MARENGO 16,004 15,019 15,824 1.011 0.949 CLARKE 18,702 18,257 19,370 0.966 0.943

Efforts to talk to voting officials in the four counties with more than 100 percent voting registration were not immediately successful.

But a registrar from Washington County, which came in just under the 100 percent mark, offered some explanation.

According to the March figures, Washington County had 12,636 active voters, compared to a 2012 voting age population of 13,008.

Richmond Chaney, a member of the Washington County Board of Registrars for 15 years, says he thinks the census probably under-reported the county’s voting age population. He says he heard of instances where residents were suspicious of census takers and wouldn’t answer their questions.

“People would not talk to them and told them it was not their business how many people live in their house,” Chaney said.

Chaney also said some voters are listed more than once on the rolls because of the voter registration mandates for some public agencies. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires all public assistance offices to offer people a chance to register to vote.

For example, some people who are already registered to vote might register again when they go to apply for food stamps or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. If they use a different name spelling, date of birth or anything else that deviates from how they are already listed on the voter rolls, they can be added as a duplicate.

Chaney said the board works to eliminate duplications, but that requires some checking, such as phone calls to make sure that the voter is actually listed twice.

“We cannot take them out if anything is different about it,” Chaney said.

Chaney said the board can’t remove a voter just because they heard that they died. They have to receive official word.

Don Milligan, president of the Alabama Association of the Boards of Registrars, also believes that census under-counting is a factor in some counties that have registration rates close to or exceeding 100 percent. Milligan is a registrar in Marshall County, where the rate is much lower, 68 percent. The statewide rate is 81 percent, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Milligan said another possible factor is that people are not required to show any identification when they register to vote. They do have to sign the form swearing that their information is correct, and could face up to five years in prison for perjury if it’s falsified.

Bennett is a longtime advocate of cleaning up the voter rolls. He was secretary of state from 1993 to 2003 and was appointed to the position again last year to complete the term of Beth Chapman.

As a state senator in 1989, Bennett sponsored the bill that set up the voter file maintenance system, which helps county boards purge names through death notices from the Department of Public Health, conviction notices from the court system and new driver’s license registrations in other states.

Bennett was secretary of state in 1995 when the Legislature passed the post card verification system.

Bennett said it’s estimated that more than half a million names have been removed from Alabama’s voter rolls since 1986.

“Purging voter rolls is a painstaking process that takes time and money and a great deal of care,” Bennett said in an email. “But the end result is worth it in the pursuit of elections that voters can trust.”

Bennett said he believes Alabama's new photo ID requirement for voting, which takes effect with the June 3 primary, will reduce the likelihood of someone fraudulently voting under another name.

This story was corrected at 9:45 a.m. on April 23 to say that Wilcox County, not Hale County, was one of the four counties with more active registered voters than the 2012 Census estimate of its adult age population.

