Luis was also disturbed on behalf of hundreds of other people who also had their personal details – names, addresses and in some cases even home phone numbers – posted in the appendices of the Pilf reports. “I thought if my name is on the list, and I’m a US citizen, how many others were wrongly accused of being illegal ‘alien’ voters?”
Alien Invasion is one of the more startling examples of a growing rightwing push to pressurize election officials across the country to purge large numbers of people from the registered voter rolls. With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, and with so much riding at both national and state level on voter turnout, the stakes could not be higher.
Voting rights experts warn that hundreds of thousands of eligible voters could face hurdles as they try to get to polling stations in November. African American, Hispanic or other minority communities, as well as young voters, are especially vulnerable to purges as they more frequently experience the kind of bureaucratic hiccups that can lead them to them being mistakenly ruled ineligible.