The Warren County Election Commission has a problem: more people are listed on the county voter rolls than are eligible according to census data.

“When you have more people registered to vote than there are breathing, that creates an unnecessary opportunity for mischief,” said Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. “Since we don’t have a voter ID law in this state, it’s an even bigger opportunity for mischief.”

Hosemann and his staff members were in his native Vicksburg Thursday to speak with county election commission members about cleaning up voter rolls. As it stands, there are 34,476 residents of voting age in Warren County according to 2000 census data. However, voter rolls in the county include 35,737 residents, meaning roughly 101 percent of the county’s populace over age 18 is registered to vote.

“Across the country we typically find voter rolls to include about 70 to 80 percent of all eligible voters,” said Hosemann.

Warren is one of 24 counties in Mississippi in which voter rolls are swelled to an impossible degree, said Hosemann. That is nearly 30 percent of the 82 total counties in the state. Overgrown voter rolls typically include the names of those who have died or moved out of the area since the last time an effort was made to clean up the rolls.

Hosemann and staff members are in the process of visiting the election commission in each of those counties to explain the process of purging names from bloated voter rolls. Warren is the third county to be visited by the secretary of state, and Hosemann said he expects the meetings to be complete across the state within two months.

The five-member election commission is being given until Aug. 30 to clean up voter rolls in Warren County, said Hosemann.

“We’re anticipating the largest turnout ever in Mississippi during the upcoming election,” he said. “It’s very important voter rolls are as accurate as possible.”