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Judicial Watch asks court to dismiss attempt to halt lawsuit to purge Illinois voter rolls

Judicial Watch asks court to dismiss attempt to halt lawsuit to purge Illinois voter rolls

(Washington, DC)Legal Guard today announced that it has asked a federal court to deny the State of Illinois’ request to dismiss and terminate Judicial Watch’s lawsuit under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to purge the state’s voting rolls (Judicial Watch, Inc. et al. v. The Illinois State Board of Elections et al. (No. 1:24-cv-01867)).

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of Judicial Watch and the nonprofit organizations Illinois Family Action, Breakthrough Ideas, and Carol J. Davis, a legally registered voter in Illinois.

In its original complaint, Judicial Watch points out that 23 Illinois counties, with a combined registration list of 980,089 voters, reported removing only 100 registrations in the past two years under a key provision of the NVRA. That is an “absurdly small” number, and there is “no way these counties can operate a comprehensive program that makes reasonable efforts to cancel the registrations of voters who are no longer eligible to vote because of a change of residence when so few registrations are removed.”

In its most recent court filing, Judicial Watch points out:

Aside from the outright failure of 23 Illinois counties to remove registrants who fail to respond to confirmation notices (as required by the NVRA), the complaint also lists counties that lack data critical to the NVRA’s roll-maintenance efforts. Again relying on defendants’ own admissions to the Election Assistance Commission, the complaint notes that 34 counties could only report “Data Unavailable” regarding removals of confirmation notices, and 19 of those reported the same for removals due to death. Additionally, 29 counties reported “Data Unavailable” regarding the number of confirmation notices sent, and 22 counties said the same about the number of inactive registrations. In all, “(f)ifty of the 108 Illinois jurisdictions failed to report data to the EAC in one or more of the critical data categories noted above.” For her part, defendant Matthews confirmed that she “does not have access to the list maintenance data of local election authorities.” Apparently, no one in Illinois has access to this data.

Judicial Watch argues:

1. Defendants failed to implement the NVRA’s required “general reasonable efforts program” to remove voters who have moved or died;

2. Defendant Matthews, who is the chief election official of the State of Illinois… has failed in her duty to coordinate the State’s responsibilities under the law; and

3. Defendants have failed to preserve and provide to plaintiffs NVRA-related documents that they are required to provide. Support for these allegations comes primarily from defendants’ own admissions, in response to a survey conducted every two years by the federal Election Assistance Commission while it prepares a mandatory report to Congress, and in their correspondence with plaintiffs.

“Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections, and Illinois’ voter rolls are a mess,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “Rather than trying to stop our lawsuit, Illinois should take immediate steps to clean up its rolls to prevent fraud and increase voter confidence in elections.”

Judicial Watch is a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of its work, Judicial Watch has assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who have stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii and purged voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, among other accomplishments.

Robert Popper, a senior attorney at Judicial Watch, leads the election rights program. Popper previously served in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he led voting rights investigations, lawsuits, consent decrees and settlements in dozens of states.

In May 2024, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against California to force a purge of its voter rolls. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Judicial Watch and the Libertarian Party of California, asks the court to force California to “make a reasonable effort to remove the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rolls,” as required by federal law.

In December 2023, notice letters were sent to election officials in the District of Columbia, California, and Illinois, informing them of apparent violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls. The letters point out that these jurisdictions publicly reported that they had removed few, if any, ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The letters threatened federal lawsuits unless the violations were promptly corrected. In response to Judicial Watch’s inquiries, officials in Washington, D.C. admitted that they had failed to comply with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove an additional 37,962, and marked an additional 73,522 registrations as “inactive.” NVRA lawsuits were subsequently filed against California and Illinois.

In July 2023, Judicial Watch filed a petition amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefly, in support of the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which struck down Maine’s policy restricting the use and distribution of the state’s voter registration rolls (Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Shenna Bellows (No. 23-1361). According to a 2020 nationwide survey conducted by Judicial Watch, the registration rate in the state of Maine was 101% of eligible voters.

Judicial Watch also settled a federal election integrity lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois Conservative Union against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its executive director in July 2023. As a result, the union now has access to the current centralized, statewide list of registered voters for the state for the past 15 elections.

In April 2023, Pennsylvania settled with Judicial Watch, admitting in court documents that it purged 178,258 ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial Watch. The settlement requires Pennsylvania and five of its counties to provide extensive public reporting of statistics related to their ongoing efforts to purge the voter rolls for the next five years.

In March 2023, Colorado agreed to settle a lawsuit from Judicial Watch NVRA, which alleged that Colorado failed to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement requires Colorado to provide Judicial Watch with the most recent voter roll data for every county in Colorado every year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed that 1,207,613 ineligible voters had been purged from the rolls since the previous year, under a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch in 2017.

Judicial Watch has settled a federal elections integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from its voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps to clean up its voter rolls in the future.

Kentucky also deleted hundreds of thousands of old registrations after reaching an agreement to end another lawsuit from Judicial Watch.

In February 2022, Judicial Watch settled a lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its counties over voter roll purges, after North Carolina purged more than 430,000 inactive registrations from the voter rolls.

In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor of Judicial Watch’s objection to the Democratic state legislature’s “extreme” redistricting.

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