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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

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No.

Wisconsin has 4.27 million inactive voters and 3.66 million registered voters.

Inactive voters are not registered and are not eligible to vote unless they re-register on or before an Election Day.

Republican Eric Hovde added the numbers together in claiming Wisconsin has “almost 8 million registered voters on our voter rolls with only 3.5 million active voters.”

Hovde raised election administration questions one week after losing Nov. 5, 2024, to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. Unofficially, Baldwin won by less than 1 percentage point.

People are made inactive when they die, move and register in another state, are convicted of a felony, are adjudicated incompetent to vote, or have their name purged.

Purging occurs every two years. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is required to make registered voters inactive if they have not voted in the past four years and have not responded to a mailing about their registration status.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Wisconsin Elections Commission: Inactive voters

Wisconsin Elections Commission: November 1, 2024 Voter Registration Statistics

LiveNOW from FOX: Eric Hovde (R) refuses to concede Wisconsin Senate race, weighing recount

Associated Press: Wisconsin Republican Hovde admits he lost US Senate race, still weighing a recount

Wisconsin Elections Commission: No, there are not almost 8 million registered voters on Wisconsin’s voter rolls

Wisconsin Elections Commission: Wisconsin Elections Commission: Deactivates 108,378 voter records – WisPolitics

NPR: Voter roll data is messy, leading to baseless election claims : NPR

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Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time Milwaukee-based reporter in October 2024 after starting as a freelance Fact Briefs reporter in January 2023. In addition to contributing to Wisconsin Watch’s collaboration with The Gigafact Project to combat online misinformation, he reports on Wisconsin policy, labor, energy and the rapid expansion of data centers across the state. Kertscher is a former longtime reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and the author of two sports books, on Al McGuire and Brett Favre.