Voter Removal from Registration List Based on Name Matching is Unreliable

The voter registration list is the information backbone for the administration of elections. Keeping it up-to-date is a difficult task that can expose officials to accusations of voter disenfranchisement. We review here some of the problems that affected Florida elections, explore some solutions proposed with the Help America Vote Act of 2002 in regards to voter registration maintenance, and illustrate these with an experiment on the actual voter rolls from Florida.