In the United States, a state judge in Wisconsin has ordered 234,000 names to be purged from the voter rolls ahead of the 2020 election, in a move decried by critics as a Republican-backed effort at voter suppression. Under the ruling, registered voters who did not respond to a letter within 30 days asking them to confirm their home address will be forced to re-register or will be ineligible to vote next year. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a majority of the voters who were sent the letters were in districts that leaned Democratic in the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes that year. Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, called the purge a “product of a right-wing legal and political strategy to prevent eligible voters from voting,” adding, “It should be a concern to anyone who believes in the core idea of democracy.”