  Although observations point to the neutrality and lack of currents on large
scales in the universe, many mechanisms are known that can generate charges or
currents during the early universe. We examine the question of survivability of
relic charges and currents in a realistic model of the universe. We show that
the dynamics of cosmological perturbations drive the universe to become
electrically neutral and current-free to a high degree of accuracy on all
scales, regardless of initial conditions. We find that charges are efficiently
driven away in a time small compared to the Hubble time for temperatures 100
GeV > T > 1 eV, while the same is true for currents at all temperatures T > 1
eV. The forced neutrality relaxes constraints on the generation of an electric
charge in the early universe, while the forced erasure of currents disfavors
many mechanisms for the early origins of large-scale magnetic fields.
