Imagine: It’s Election Day and you go to your polling location to vote and … you’re not on the voter list.

Voter purges are, unfortunately, becoming more common. Today we’re going to focus on one way states purges voters: Crosscheck, a program many states use to “clean up” their voter lists but that has a 99% error rate. Seriously, it’s true.

Here’s one example from a statistical analysis that was done on Crosscheck:

In 2004, there were 282 William Smiths who were registered to vote in New Jersey. Statistically, you’d expect at least four of them to share the same birthday. Using Crosscheck’s system, all four of them would be flagged as potentially fraudulent voters.

If your state is using Crosscheck, you definitely want them to stop doing that. I’ll tell you how in a moment. Here are the states that are using it:

Map from Leave Crosscheck

Our friends at the terrific Americans of Conscience Checklist listed this important action at the top of this week’s list, and also provided a helpful script to guide your call with your state legislators:

Script: I am a resident of [TOWN] and am requesting that [STATE] become the next state to exit the Interstate Crosscheck System. Every month, more states leave due to Crosscheck’s history of purging legitimate voters and leaking citizens’ data—including social security numbers. Crosscheck has been found to be 99% inaccurate and jeopardizes an essential tenet of our democracy: the vote. Please support voter participation in [STATE] by switching to ERIC, the more secure, more accurate option. Thank you.

You can find the contact information for your two state legislators HERE.

This is an action that takes only a couple of minutes to complete, but can have an outsized impact on the voters in your state. Also, please consider sharing this with others. Thank you!

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Categories: Explainers

Tags: calls to action, Crosscheck, featured, voter purges, voting rights