Record Missouri voter roll likely inflated

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A record 4.2 million Missourians are registered to vote on Nov. 2 -- a figure so high that election officials acknowledge it likely is inflated by a large number of people who are registered more than once.

Statewide, there were fewer than 4.3 million voting-age residents, according to the most recent Census Bureau estimate. If Missouri's voter rolls were accurate, that would mean 98 percent of adults are registered to vote.

"We've wondered if there's anyone left in the state who is not registered," Betsy Byers, an election director for Secretary of State Matt Blunt, said Tuesday.

"It's inflated somewhat," she added, "but I don't know what to tell you as far as how much."

The inflated voter rolls could allow some people to illegally vote twice, Byers acknowledged. Yet a more likely outcome, she said, is that many of the duplicative registrants will vote only once or not at all -- and Missouri's voter turnout will appear lower than reality.

Missouri has no way of automatically updating its central voter registration database when a resident moves to another city, county or state. And under federal law, it can take more than four years to remove a voter whose address cannot be verified.

The result is that in 36 of Missouri's 114 counties, and in the city of St. Louis, more voters are registered for the November elections than there were residents age 18 and older in the July 2003 Census Bureau estimate, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

At the top of that list is St. Louis -- a problem spot in the 2000 elections -- which has an estimated 246,320 voting-age residents yet has 281,316 registered voters. The city reports 65,993 of those voters as inactive, meaning their addresses haven't been verified and they haven't voted recently. Yet by virtue of remaining on the rolls, they still could vote in the November elections.

Byers said voter rolls may also be inflated in other counties because, like St. Louis, they have not followed procedures for removing people whose addresses cannot be verified.

Under federal law, local election authorities are supposed to periodically mail address verification cards to registered voters. If they are returned as undeliverable, then election officials are to mail a second notification that can be forwarded to a new address. If election officials still don't hear from the voters -- and they don't vote in the next two general elections -- then those voters can be removed from the rolls.

In St. Louis, election officials in past years didn't properly notify people that they could be dropped from the rolls if they didn't verify their addresses. As a result, the city's voter rolls still have people whose addresses haven't been verified and who haven't voted since 1992, said Jim O'Toole, the city's Democratic election director.

O'Toole said he expects about 40,000 people to be dropped from the city's voter rolls after the November election because two general elections will have passed since properly worded notifications were mailed.

Byers estimated that "a couple hundred thousand people" statewide could be removed from voter rolls after the November election for the same reason.

Statewide, 561,969 voters are classified as inactive.

In the November 2000 elections, some potential voters were turned away in St. Louis because their names were on inactive lists and couldn't quickly be verified. Because of long lines, a judge ordered the city's polls to stay open past closing time but was later reversed by an appellate court.

This year's statewide registration of 4,206,423 voters is up 9 percent from the 2000 elections. Because of a dip in voter rolls as names were removed, this year's total is up 14 percent from November 2002 and up 20 percent from the Aug. 3 party primaries.

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