As President Trump revived claims about the 2020 election this week, Missouri's Secretary of State, Denny Hoskins, offered a number in support: his office, he said, had removed more than 280,000 'ineligible' voter registrations [1]. The figure is meant to sound like fraud uncovered. Missouri's own records show something far more ordinary.
Removing ineligible registrations is a routine, legally required task - states are obligated to keep voter rolls current by taking off people who have died, moved away, or otherwise become ineligible. Missouri's own account of its 2025 removals - more than 195,000 that year - is dominated by exactly that: over 43,000 deceased voters and several thousand with felony convictions, with the remainder largely people who moved or went inactive [3]. These are the housekeeping categories of voter-roll maintenance, not evidence of an election stolen [3].
The part Hoskins spotlights - noncitizens on the rolls - is both small and troubled. To find them, Missouri ran its voter list through a federal database, the SAVE system, which returned flags county clerks then had to check [2]. In Boone County, 74 flagged names were narrowed to 33; in Miller County, two [2]. The clerk in Boone County said many of those flagged were naturalized citizens - one of whom, she noted, her office had registered at their own naturalization ceremony [2]. The clerks declined to remove voters who had attested their citizenship [2].
The 280,000 figure, then, is real, and almost entirely mundane: the deaths, moves, and inactivity that every state processes to keep its rolls clean [3]. The noncitizen crisis it is being used to suggest is not there in the numbers - the tool meant to find noncitizens turned up mostly citizens [2]. A routine maintenance total is being offered as proof of a stolen election. It is proof only that Missouri does list maintenance [1][3].
