VIDEO: What’s Next For Voting In Noxubee County

NOXUBEE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Voter rolls in Noxubee County are coming under the microscope.

It’s all to settle a federal lawsuit filed back in September 2015 by the American Civil Rights Union.

For some people, the numbers just didn’t seem to add up.

Now that Federal Judge William Barbour has accepted the agreement between the American Civil Rights Union and the Noxubee County Election Commission, the clean-up can begin.

The first clue that voter lists needed a closer look was obvious.

“The census in 2010, indicated that there were like 113% in Noxubee County over the voting age population. They had more voters on the rolls than they actually had voting population in Noxubee County,” says American Civil Rights Union Representative, Attorney Henry Ross.

The American Civil Rights Union filed suit to get the voter rolls cleaned up and that takes a number of steps.

“It requires that they do a mailing to all the voters who have not voted since January 1, 2011, to identify these voters and to send them a mailing to find out if they still live in Noxubee County, Mississippi.”

Those returned with a proper address will stay on the rolls, but those who don’t return the card will be taken off.

Noxubee Election Commissioners have until April 15th, 2017 to get that step done.

“They weren’t breaking the law in the sense that criminals would enter anything like that, yet it’s a violation of state law, as well as federal law. You’re required as an election commission to clean up voter rolls. This just enforces that mechanism and makes sure it happens by a certain date, and in the way prescribed by the, by the law itself.”

Oktibbeha County Election Deputy Clerk Sheryl Elmore says a lot of work goes into making sure voter roles are kept clean.

“My commissioners come in every Monday for five hours, and we have one that goes in the system and checks everything, and we have one that has the death notices from the newspapers, then I get calls periodically, not very often, but periodically of somebody who has passed away.”

The goal behind all of it is to prevent double voting.

“Everyone wants a fair election, that’s the goal of it all. We’re not trying to punish anybody, we’re not trying to make it hard on anybody, we just want the voters in the state of Mississippi and around the country to feel comfortable that when an election is conducted, it’s going to be fair and the result will be fair,” says Ross.

The goal is to have inactive voters removed by September 2018.

Ross says the American Civil Rights Union has brought suits in other counties, including: Walthall, Clark, and Jefferson Davis County.

We reached out to some Noxubee County officials helping with the voter roll clean up, but they were out of town and couldn’t meet with us.