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It is routine for election officials throughout the country to inspect their voter rolls to ensure people who have moved, died, or not cast a ballot in a while do not linger for years in the data.

But that has not stopped right-wing activists, Republican U.S. senators, and the richest man in the world from suggesting Pennsylvania’s latest update to its voter rolls Monday was a mass expulsion of potentially fraudulent voters as the high-stakes midterm elections approach.

“The Pennsylvania Department of State just conducted one of its biggest purges ever,” MAGA influencer and grassroots Republican voter registration activist Scott Presler wrote on X, and “Democrats lost TENS of thousands of voters.”

Presler, who six years ago led a two-day demonstration in Harrisburg over the 2020 election results, claimed the numbers showed his effort to “clean the voter rolls is actually working.”

Elon Musk, the billionaire who was the biggest donor in the 2024 presidential election, elevated Presler’s post, adding on Musk’s own X platform, “Nice work.”

And U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, Pennsylvania’s highest-ranking Republican, praised Presler for “leading the charge.”

The reality of Monday’s update is that both parties saw voters moved from active to inactive status (meaning they have not voted in a while).

Among Democrats, 55,241 were moved to inactive status on Monday, while 23,832 Republicans also became inactive.

Those voters have not actually been removed from the rolls and can still vote in November, despite Presler’s claims of a purge. Being inactive is not the same as being ineligible.

“Updating these voter records is not a ‘purge’ of voters and does not mean that they were on the rolls improperly,” said Geoff Morrow, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State.

Morrow called the update a reflection of county election offices’ diligence in their duty to regularly perform maintenance to their lists.

“There are many reasons people come off the voter list, most likely they moved, and this is all part of the normal process,” said Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija, a Democrat who serves on the county’s election board. “There’s nothing particularly special or unusual about this.”

What is happening?

Counties across Pennsylvania have been updating their voter lists, as required under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. This update must occur no later than 90 days before a federal election. The midterm elections, which will feature the Pennsylvania governor’s race and several competitive congressional contests, are Nov. 3.

As part of the maintenance process, voters who have not participated in five years are moved from active to inactive status. Inactive voters are still registered and can still vote, just like an active voter.

A voter who cast a ballot in 2020 but sat out the following elections, for example, would be considered inactive.

This practice is standard, said Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, the Republican member of the three-person board that oversees the city’s elections.

“Philadelphia conducts regular list maintenance activities in compliance with federal and state laws to determine whether a voter should be marked as ‘inactive’ or removed from the registration rolls,” he said on X.

Voters may also be categorized as inactive if they have submitted a USPS mail-forwarding request or registered to vote in another state, or when a mailing to their registered address is returned as undeliverable.

Becoming an inactive voter is the first step on the path to being removed, which is done if the inactive voter does not participate in the next two federal elections.

“What we’re seeing here is an example of our current process for voter roll maintenance playing out, and it works,” Makhija said. “It’s designed to actually protect people’s registration because it gives them a chance to respond if we mark them as inactive, and it also keeps them on the rolls if they do respond.”

In addition to tracking whether voters are active, Morrow said, election officials in the state regularly review death records, U.S. Postal Service address changes, and other reliable sources “to identify records that may require updating” when a voter dies or moves.

Can inactive voters cast a ballot in November?

Yes. Voters who are inactive can change their status simply by voting. Those who have been removed can reregister, too. Registration must be done 15 days prior to an election, which is Oct. 19 this year.

“Voters with an ‘inactive’ status are still eligible to vote and can be moved back to ‘active’ status if they take an action to update their record or vote before the passage of two federal general elections,” Bluestein said.

To vote in Pennsylvania, you must be a U.S. citizen, a resident of the state for 30 days, and 18 years old by Election Day. It is possible that someone who is eligible to vote has become inactive after years of sitting out elections.

Does this have anything to do with noncitizen voters, like those found in New Jersey?

Presler, who said he “won’t stop until all 67 counties comply,” posted a cartoon image of himself pressing a light switch as cockroaches — labeled with phrases like “illegal voter” and “dead voter” — scurry away.

Presler did not respond to requests from The Inquirer to answer questions about his posts, which appear to conflate inactive voters with ineligible voters.

The posts come after President Donald Trump’s administration claimed Pennsylvania was one of four Democratic-led states with thousands of noncitizens on its voter rolls, a claim state officials say the federal government has not provided evidence for.

But a change in a voter’s status from active to inactive is not related to citizenship or other issues of eligibility.

Noncitizens would actually be removed from rolls under Pennsylvania law and face potential prosecution and deportation if they had cast a ballot — as the Pennsylvania Department of State noted in a Friday report from WHP on an apparent case of a noncitizen voting in Lancaster County.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, has said noncitizen voting “is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.”

New Jersey last month revealed 6,600 people — a number later reduced to roughly 4,600 — who were not citizens were improperly registered to vote over a yearlong span ahead of the 2024 election because of a software error in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system.

Schmidt had identified a similar glitch in Pennsylvania in 2017 as Philadelphia’s Republican city commissioner, identifying 168 noncitizens on the city’s voter rolls at the time. They were removed from the rolls and the glitch was fixed.

Why are Elon Musk and senators from other states posting about routine maintenance?

Prominent Republicans who elevated Presler’s post tied it to their efforts to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping national voting overhaul that has been championed by Trump ahead of the midterms.

“In light of what Scott Presler has uncovered, who could still think we don’t need the SAVE America Act?” Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican and Trump ally, posted Monday.

The act would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and mandate all voters show photo identification at the polls, something some conservatives say would prevent noncitizens from voting.

But the legislation has faced significant pushback, including from some elected Republicans, over concerns that it would make it tougher for many Americans, especially married people whose last names may no longer match their birth certificate, to vote.

How do party registrations compare?

According to state data as of Monday, Democrats have more than 3.4 million active voters and Republicans are not far behind, trailing by only 25,811 active voters.

But each party also has hundreds of thousands of inactive voters — 437,330 in the case of Democrats and 256,711 for Republicans — who could potentially vote in November.

Can we say anything about party odds in the midterms?

The Pennsylvania Republican Party celebrated the news of the narrowing gap in active voters as a milestone its “ultimate mission of turning Pennsylvania into a permanent red state.”

Both parties want to win the registration war, but party registrations alone will not predict victory in November.

Just because someone is registered as a Democrat or Republican does not mean he or she will necessarily vote for every candidate in that party on the ballot.

And there are also nearly 1.5 million unaffiliated voters — including inactive registrants — who could sway the state’s elections.

Staff writer Joe Yerardi contributed to this article.