Virginia Voters Alliance, an election integrity group, has called attention to the surprising amount of duplicate voter registrations in Maryland and Virginia, challenging the view that voter fraud is nonexistent, Watchdog reports.

According to the Virginia Voters Alliance (VVA), the state has decided to term these as inactive voters, meaning that they join the total of 43,896 Virginia and Maryland voters who are eligible to vote up until 2019.

As state officials have taken little action, Fairfax General Registrar Cameron Quinn has announced she intends to step in, although since there are an estimated 14,646 duplicate registrations, it’s a race to the clock to remove them before the voter database freezes 60 days before a general election.

“We can’t do anything with that volume of names in the time we have,” Quinn said, according to Watchdog. For Quinn, the best option is to send out letters to all of the duplicate voters in Virginia, asking them to clarify their status.

That there are 14,646 duplicate registrations between Fairfax County, Virginia and Maryland is evidence, according to President Reagan George of VVA, that voter fraud is still an active and important concern. “There are procedures in place, including a hearing before the Fairfax Board, for the registrar’s office to expeditiously remove these duplicate registrations from the online database system,” he added, in response to the timeline concerns Quinn cited moving forward.

More progress has been made on the Maryland side. The duplicate registration information is now in the hands of the state prosecutor. If a voter is convicted of voter fraud in Maryland, the voter will still be allowed to vote, as the charge itself only amounts to a misdemeanor. However, in Virginia it is classified as a false statement, which can result in a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

“What we want to know is whether these voters will have been investigated to the point that they will not be permitted to vote in the general election in Virginia,” Cathy Kelleher, president of Election Integrity Maryland, said.

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