Tim Kennedy on elections: what the evidence says · JRE #1535

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Claims that a state or county has a voter-registration rate exceeding 100% of its eligible or voting-age population have circulated repeatedly since at least 2017, most often traced to figures from Judicial Watch and the Public Interest Legal Foundation and later repeated by figures including Kayleigh McEnany. Election administration experts say these figures are misleading because they typically compare total registration rolls (which include "inactive" voters who have moved, died, or otherwise become ineligible) against population estimates, rather than counting only active, eligible voters. Federal law (the National Voter Registration Act) bars election officials from purging inactive registrations quickly; inactive voters can remain on the rolls for two federal election cycles even after officials suspect they have moved. Fact-checkers who examined this class of claim found no accompanying evidence that ineligible or inactive registrants actually cast ballots, and turnout data consistently shows actual votes cast fall well below total registration counts, undercutting the fraud implication. The specific claim as relayed here is misleading: outdated voter rolls that retain inactive registrants can produce registration counts that appear to exceed the eligible population, but this reflects list-maintenance timing required by federal law, not evidence of fraudulent voting.