Great Lakes Wire

Government watchdog group Judicial Watch is putting 14 counties and five states on notice that they must clean up their voter rolls or face lawsuits in federal court.

In a letter to state and county election officials, Judicial Watch informed them that their own data shows they have removed an “absurdly low” or “impossible” number of inactive voter registrations. The states include Arkansas, California, Illinois, New York and Oregon.

Judicial Watch warned the officials that they are violating a key section of the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), which requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove” from the official voter rolls “the names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence.

“Once again, Judicial Watch is leading the charge for clean voter rolls and election integrity,” said group President Tom Fitton in a statement. “These letters are just the beginning of another sweep, in federal court if necessary, to clean voter rolls throughout the country.”

Some of the biggest offenders were in California and New York. Sacramento County, California, for instance, removed no voters over four years. The county has 1,049,495 registered voters. New York County (Manhattan) removed two voters over four years. The county has 1,250,793 registered voters.

Judicial Watch attorney Robert Popper, who heads he group’s election integrity efforts, noted that approximately 10% of Americans move each year.

“Those counties should generate hundreds of thousands of canceled registrations,” Popper said. “There is simply no way to comply with federal law while removing so few outdated registrations under its key provision.”

Past efforts by Judicial Watch have led to a number of voter-roll cleanups and successful NVRA lawsuits, the group said.

Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, removed 69,000 outdated registrations after received a warning from Judicial Watch. And the Supreme Court upheld a voter roll cleanup program that resulted from a Judicial Watch settlement of a federal lawsuit with Ohio.

In related news, public interest law firm the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) recently filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for allegedly not removing dead voters from the rolls. A PILF analysis showed that as of August 2021, 25,975 dead voters remained on Michigan’s voter rolls.

“This case is about ensuring that deceased registrants are not receiving ballots,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams in a statement. “For over a year, we’ve shared specific data with the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office about the alarming problem of deceased registrants on Michigan’s voter rolls. Secretary Benson has done nothing to resolve the problem and is even refusing to hand over public documents related to these failures. The failure to remove deceased registrants creates an opportunity for fraud and makes Michigan’s elections less secure.”

In September 2020, PILF released a study showing that voter rolls in 42 states have thousands of dead people still listed, and they have duplicate registrations as well. The group noted that during the 2018 general election, 37,889 likely duplicate registrants were apparently credited with casting two votes from the same address, and 34,000 appear to have voted from non-residential addresses.