Nearly two million dead people are still registered to vote this coming November, while another 24 million US voter registrations contain mistakes or imprecise data, the Pew Center on the States says in a new report.
The study, carried out for Pew by RTI International, discusses various problems in the voter registration system and emphasizes the need to modernize it to correct problems and save taxpayers' money.
At least 51 million citizens fulfill the requirements to vote but have not registered, while one in every eight voter registrations "are no longer valid or have significant inaccuracies", the report says.
Approximately 2.75 million people are registered to vote in more than one state and some 12 million registrations have incorrect addresses, whether because the voters moved or because it is impossible to locate them by mail to correct the voter records.
"Voter registration is the gateway to participating in our democracy, but these antiquated, paper-based systems are plagued with errors and inefficiencies," David Becker, director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Center on the States, said in a statement.
"These problems waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence, and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections," he said.
The report says that in 2008, state and local authorities in Oregon spent $4.11 per voter to process registrations.
By contrast, Canada, which uses up-to-date technology common in the private sector, spends less than 35 cents per voter.