If that was a product slogan, would you buy the product? Most likely, not. But, this is what’s happening with electronic voter registration databases across the country.

Allow me to explain. There’s an old adage and, it’s particularly appropriate in the computer world. It goes, “garbage in, garbage out”. In other words, if you feed bad data to a computer, you can’t expect good data to come out. So, to get you what you want, you have to consider other possibilities.

In this case, it’s clear that no one thought that the names or numbers on a person’s voter registration form might not match exactly with their records with Social Security or their state’s department of motor vehicles. As a result, thousands of legal voters are being purged from voter rolls.

Now, I know what some will say. You should always use the same name and contact information on every official document you fill out. Well, yes, but what happens if you hand that document over to someone else and they enter it in with typos and “Michele” gets entered as “Michelle” or “Joseph” gets entered as “Joesph”? Or what if you move to another part of your city and the address on your driver’s license no longer matches your home address?

If you go by these systems, you get purged.

Before anyone says that these aren’t big issues, check out the following:

The databases are only as good as the information fed into them by applicants and election officials. That can lead to human errors as well as variations from state to state. Colorado, for instance, knocked nearly 20% of its voters off the rolls between the 2004 and 2006 elections. Arkansas purged 3%, according to Election Assistance Commission data.

So, it at least one instance, this affected 1 in 5 voters.

With this being a presidential election year, a few thousand votes can matter. To have voters purged, in such great numbers is a recipe for electoral disaster.

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