Another Voter Roll Cleanup Underway In Indiana

Hoosiers are starting to see postcards in the mail from the state, reminding them about Election Day in November.

It’s how the Secretary of State’s office is conducting another purge of the voter rolls.

Federal law requires the state to regularly clean up its voter rolls – ensuring people who have moved or died, for instance, are either removed or have their information updated.

The primary way Indiana does that is by sending out postcards to registered voters. If the voter’s information is correct, they don’t have to do anything. But if the postcard comes back as undeliverable, the state tries to send another one to the forwarding address on file with the U.S. Post Office. It asks the voter to update their info or cancel their registration.

If that second postcard comes back undeliverable – or if there is no forwarding address – the voter is put on the state’s “inactive” list. That means if they don’t vote or update their information by the end of 2022, they can be removed from the voter rolls.

The state has been sharply criticized for some of the ways it cleans its voter rolls. A federal judge halted one of those methods last year.