Chad Ennis, vice president of the Honest Elections Project and Honest Elections Project Action, has identified "bloated" voter rolls as a primary issue facing election systems nationwide, noting that many states lack the willpower to clean up inaccurate data.
"The blue states are very bloated; the red states are a little bloated," Ennis shared during an interview on American Family Radio. "At least the red states are trying."
Ennis highlighted Kentucky as a success story, where Secretary of State Michael Adams (R) has overseen the removal of more than 700,000 ineligible voter registrations through expanded list-maintenance efforts.
Other Republican-led states like Georgia, Florida and Texas have pursued a broad election-integrity agenda that includes voter-roll maintenance, expanded voter ID requirements, stricter absentee-ballot rules, greater election oversight, citizenship verification efforts and/or post-election audits.
Supporters say the measures protect election security and public confidence, while critics argue some changes impose unnecessary burdens on eligible voters.
For Ennis, the issue comes down to simple administrative discipline.
"In private business, if you have bad data, what do you do? You fix it," he posed. "In too many of these cases, we've got bad data, and what do we do? Ignore it. It just gets worse, and it snowballs."
That is where the Honest Elections Project comes into play.
To help address vulnerabilities, the nonpartisan organization works directly with policymakers and state officials to advocate for strict list-hygiene laws and common-sense election safeguards. By championing policy reform and public accountability, the group aims to ensure states regularly audit and update their voter registries to prevent fraud and maintain public trust.
"We want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat, and we support any policies that do that," Ennis added.
Turning to federal policy, Ennis discussed the SAVE Act, noting that Senate leadership must navigate a divided caucus where some moderate Republicans oppose the bill. Nevertheless, he remains optimistic that key measures could advance through budget reconciliation by conditioning federal block grant funding on state-level election integrity improvements.
