TOPEKA – Dead men may tell no tales, but apparently that didn’t stop them from trying to register to vote during most of 2024 – right up to the point the Social Security Administration stopped verifying new voter registrations in October.
Arizona; Michigan; Kansas – each saw huge percentages of new “motor voter” registrations – those made while supposed beating heart drivers were renewing their licenses at local license offices at points during 2024 – that couldn’t be confirmed by SSI. Civilian investigators in Kansas have run into deadlock trying to figure out why and from where these phantom registrations came. Those are answers it may take an official legislative inquiry to uncover.
Long ago the “motor voter” bill enabled voter registrations at state motor vehicle agencies when applying for, or renewing, a driver’s license.
In many states the Social Security Administration was tasked to verify the identity of many of the new “motor voter” registration applications.
The SSA publishes weekly statistics by state showing the number of “Help America Vote Verification” (HAVV) transactions, along with some information about problems in the verification process.
The Watchdog Lab published an article in June about questions with the HAVV data in many states that showed problems in verifying voters.
Updates about these HAVV problems in some states were published every few weeks (mostly on X) starting in July until the Social Security Administration stopped the release in October.
Issues in HAVV records in 2024
Several states showed HAVV data issues in 2024.
Here are three examples, with the first two from “swing” states:
Arizona
In the update for the week ending Oct. 12, 2024, the State of Arizona set anall-time record in the total number of HAVV transactions with 161,182with about 8.6% of those not matching Social Security records.
Why in the last reported week ending Oct. 19, did the non-match rate climb to almost 32%? Where in Arizona did that happen?
Michigan
Total HAVV transactions in Michigan set all-time record highs in five of the last six weeks before the data updates stopped.
Why is the nonmatching rate so high in Michigan every week? Over a third of Michigan’s HAVV transactions do not match Social Security records all the time.
Kansas
In Kansas for the week ending March 23, 2024 there were 447 HAVV matches to deceased individuals of the 835 matches that week.
Why would over half the matches be to deceased that week? Where in Kansas did that happen?
In 2024 there were a total of six weeks with >30% deceased match rate in Kansas.
Kansas Open Records cannot shed any light on any questions related to HAVV data. That’s the response from the Kansas Department of Revenue.
The Kansas legislature and/or Congress should investigate the lack of transparency in the problems evident in the HAVV data with both state and federal agencies unwilling to provide any transparency about the problems.
Background
The “motor voter law” (the National Voter Registration Act of 1993) enabled state motor vehicle agencies to register voters.
Anyone seeking a driver’s license (or renewal) or a car registration can now register to vote, or update voter registration information, at a Motor Vehicle Administration office (called Department of Motor Vehicles in some states).
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 enabled the Social Security Administration to provide name verifications using full or partial Social Security Numbers on a state’s voter registration form when a voter did not have a state-issued ID.
Some states ask a new voter for a full Social Security Number, but 43 states only ask for the last four digits of the SSN.
New voter applications in particular are verified through a process developed by the Social Security Administration using a nonprofit as an intermediary. This verification process is called “Help America Vote Verification” or HAVV.
Social Security maintains a web page with weekly summaries by state of HAVV transactions.
Related
 | Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration stonewalls new transparency requests about her actions in 2020 with thousands of voter registration formsEARL F GLYNN·SEPTEMBER 4, 2024Read full story |
 | Questions about Help America Vote Verification data in many statesEARL F GLYNN·JUNE 10, 2024Read full story |
Earl Glynn – Watchdog Lab
Earl F. Glynn is a mostly-retired data scientist, scientific programmer, software engineer and physical scientist living in the Kansas City metro area, and the publisher of the substack Watchdog Lab.
