August 7 - Voter advocacy groups are increasing their watch over state election officials. Reports of voter registration purging have already surfaced in Kansas, Michigan and Mississippi. Edward Hailles Jr. Senior Attorney with the Advancement Project is watching the states closely for voter purging, which tends to impact African Americans and Latinos more often. Hailes first speaks about what voter purging is.

"I define it as an illegal removal program, that takes eligible people of the roles. There are proper list maintenance programs according to the National Voter Registration Act that provides adequate protections for voters, but when election officials remove, illegally, without affording voters those protections, then we call that purging.

"It happens when election officials tend to match voter registration applications, new submissions, new application information, against their state databases, and it could be their Social Security database. We found that often there are 46% mismatches based on flaws in the Social Security administration database. Those failure rates cause problems with voters getting removed from the roles, or not getting on the roles...".

Interview: Joanne Green, Florida Policy Director of ACORN

Section 7 of the National Voters Registration Act says that states are required to offer voter registration to anyone applying for public assistance. Recently, however several voting and low income advocacy groups have charged that states, including Florida, are not obeying the law. Election Unspun producer Karen Miller spoke with Joanne Green, Florida Policy Director from the low income family advocacy group ACORN. Green says Acorn found out about the problem by monitoring the public assistance offices.