The check is part of the voter identification card reimbursement program launched by the Department of State in July of 2005, using funds from the national Help America Vote Act. The Bureau of Elections, working with local election officials, has used the program to tag nearly 229,000 obsolete voter records for possible removal throughout the state.
"We are working diligently to clean up our voter lists as this has a two-fold benefit for the city: eliminating the opportunity for fraud and reducing election administration costs," said Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey. "It's critical that we enhance the integrity of the democratic process so voters can have faith in elections."
The 75,000 voter names marked for possible deletion, which includes 42,000 names marked in 2005 and another 33,000 names from 2003, represents approximately 12 percent of the 615,680 registered voters in the city of Detroit.
The goal of the voter identification card reimbursement program is to improve the accuracy of the state's nationally renowned Qualified Voter File (QVF), which was created in 1998 as the first statewide voter database of its kind in the nation. The file, however, contains a number of records for which verification has been difficult because it was created from the voting lists from all 1,516 cities and townships, which included the names of deceased voters, as well as many duplicate names.
Overall, the Department of State has reimbursed local clerks more than $361,000 for the cost of mailing new voter ID cards to registered voters -- the main method for verifying that the records in the QVF are up-to-date. If a voter ID card is returned as "undeliverable," the clerk sends a confirmation notice to the voter's last address on file. The notice informs the voter that his or her registration will be canceled if he or she fails to respond to the notice or vote over the course of the next two federal election cycles.
County clerks forward a list of deceased adults to the clerk of each city or township within the county so the voter registrations may be cancelled. Recognizing that this is a burdensome task for election officials, Land instructed the Bureau of Elections to use data from other sources, such as the Social Security Administration's Death Index, in order to identify records of deceased voters in Michigan's QVF. To ensure accuracy, mailing based on the information is sent to the address listed in the QVF for individuals with voting histories. The mailing informs the reader that the voter registration of the named deceased individual has been canceled and provides contact information if it is inaccurate. Roughly 16,000 notifications have been sent through this process.
