Mississippi Advisory Opinions March 22, 1991: AGO 000007640 (March 22, 1991)

AGO 000007640.

Dear Ms. Pearce:

Attorney General Mike Moore has received your letter of request and has assigned it to me for research and reply. Your letter states:

"In reference to our telephone conversation of March 5, 1991 my questions are:

1. Can the pending voters from the four year purge ever be actually purged from the voter rolls and if so, will this eliminate a pending list of these voters being sent to each voting precinct during elections.

2. Is it legal for the jury commission to use a master list of only active voters to select juries from or should the list contain all registered voters whether pending or not?"

Mississippi Code Annotated 23-15-159 (1972) authorizes the erasure of names from the registration and pollbooks of all persons who have not voted in at least one (1) election on a county, state or federal level in the last four (4) years. It also sets forth certain notification requirements and gives each person who is subject to the cancellation of his registration the opportunity to continue his registration by responding to the election commission in writing. Subsection (c) then provides:

"The commissioners shall cancel the registration of all electors thus notified who have not applied for continuance within the prescribed time period, and the names of all such electors shall be removed from the list of qualified electors on the date designated for erasure. Provided, however, the names of electors who have been removed from the list of qualified electors shall be compiled and made a part of a list entitled 'Names of those purged from the registration books,' said list to be attached to the registration books. A copy of said list shall be furnished to the appropriate municipal election commissioners within the county, and the persons whose names are contained thereon shall be removed from the registration books." (Emphasis added)

As to what constitutes the registration books, Section 23- 15-113 provides:

"The registration books are to be in the following form: Files shall contain copies of the applications for registration completed by electors, which applications shall show the date of registration and signature of elector, and such files shall be known as registration books. The files described herein may be recorded on microfilm or computer software for convenience and efficiency in storage."

In response your first question, while the names of voters who do not vote in a State, county or federal election in the last four (4) years are removed from the voter rolls (pollbooks and registration books) in accordance with Section 23-15-159, a separate "list" of such names must be maintained and attached to the registration books. We find no requirement that said list be attached to the individual precinct pollbooks that are sent to the polling places.

Regarding your second question Section 13-5-8 provides:

"(1) In April of each year, the jury commission for each county shall compile and maintain a master list consisting of the voter registration list for the county.

(2) The circuit clerk of the county and the registrar of voters shall have the duty to certify to the commission during the month of January of each year under the seal of his office the voter registration list for the county."

It is the opinion of this office that the term "voter registration list" as used in the above quoted statute does not include the list containing the names of persons whose registration has been cancelled pursuant to Section 23-15-159.

Therefore, in our opinion, the master list to be used by the jury commission would only contain the names of those persons whose names appear on the registration books and would not include the names that appear on the separate "inactive" list.

Sincerely,

MIKE MOORE, ATTORNEY GENERAL

BY:

Phil Carter Special Assistant Attorney General

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