As a result of efforts to remove inactive voter registrations from its lists, Secretary of State Gregg M. Amore announced  recently that between  November 9, 2022 and February 10, 2023, a total of 60,619 inactive registrations have been removed from the state’s voter list.  That leaves 761,125 voters on the list of which 35,708 are classified as inactive for not having voted in either the 2020 or 2022 general elections, but have not been removed.

“Enfranchisement and expanding voting access are top priorities of my administration, and in order to best serve the voting public, it’s essential that we have accurate elections data,” Secretary of State Gregg M. Amore said in a release. “That means making a consistent effort to ensure our voter lists are up-to-date, and I applaud the Department of State’s Elections Division and the local cities and towns for their work to strengthen our elections system.”

A voter’s registration becomes inactive when a piece of official elections mail is returned to the sender as “undeliverable.” If an inactive voter does not cast a ballot in one of the next two federal elections, according to the maintenance process outlined in federal and state law, their voter registration can be removed from the voter list. 

In 2020, to ensure the safety of voters and election officials during the COVID-19 pandemic, all registered voters automatically received mail ballot applications for the Presidential Primary and November General Election. As a result, the Department of State and local boards of canvassers were alerted to more “undeliverable” addresses than in a typical year. If those voters did not vote in either the 2020 or 2022 elections, the voters were notified and their registrations were removed from the voter list.

Voter list maintenance is an integral part of election integrity and security, ensuring that voter rolls remain as accurate as possible. State and local election officials receive voter list maintenance information from several agencies, including the Department of Health and the Division of Motor Vehicles, on a regular basis. 

Information on the number of registered Rhode Island voters is available online. To learn more about registering to vote or updating voter registration information online, visit https://vote.sos.ri.gov/.