SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- A new report says the American voting process is busted. The study found millions of voter registration records nationwide that are either inaccurate or no longer valid.
It's a big year for elections. Americans will choose a president. Missourians will choose a senator and a governor. A host of ballot issues will emerge across counties.
According to a new report from the Pew Center on the States, America's voter registration system is inaccurate, costly, and inefficient.
The report says some 51 million people, or one of every four eligible citizens, are not registered to vote. Of those who are registered, one of every eight registrations is significantly inaccurate or no longer valid. Even 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as active voters.
"Some do fall through the cracks. Sometimes we make mistakes and we've resurrected people from the dead on election day," said Greene County Clerk Richard Struckhoff.
Struckhoff says the voting system has had problems in the past.
"Missouri kind of had its hand slapped a few years back because there were some locations that weren't keeping up with keeping their records clean."
He says that since has changed.
"In the state of Missouri, we're constantly updating with other counties in the state."
That being said, there are still issues.
Every two years the Greene Country Clerk does a canvass of registered voters in Greene County. This year, in their latest round, they got 20,000 voter ID cards returned.
"We change their status from active to inactive. If they remain in the inactive status for two general election cycles, then we can delete them from our rolls."
Struckhoff says, at the end of the day, there is only so much his office can do.
"A lot of people don't mention this: it has to be individual responsibility."
Another big issue is the cost of elections. In Oregon, for example, the cost per registered voter is around $4 per person. In Canada the cost is about 35 cents per person. The report says our neighbors to the north use more modern technology to register people as well as data-matching techniques common in the private sector.
