This seems to be another one of those off-limit topics as there are those who see real data suggesting elections are not adhering to election laws, and others who see no problems. To put this into perspective, I want to highlight some of the real data I’ve learned over the last three years as only one of the many ways election integrity is being undermined; that being, state voter rolls.
The NVRA, National Voter Registration Act of 1993, was enacted with two goals — First, to “increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote” and second, to ensure accurate and current voter rolls requiring states to make “a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters”. Many of the ineligibles result from people moving or death[1].
By 2012, a Pew Research Center study documented that one of every eight voter registrations, 24 million in total are no longer valid or significantly inaccurate. That same year, Judicial Watch, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting transparency, accountability, and integrity in government, sued Ohio and Indiana for their failure to comply to NVRA.  Judicial Watch hired Robert Popper that year, a former lawyer and litigator for the U.S. Department of Justice and Deputy Chief of the Voting Section[2].
A Gallup poll in 2016 found an astonishing 69% of Americans said they had little confidence in the “honesty of elections.” For example, when the number of registered voters exceeds the number of citizens of voting age, this raises a legitimate inquiry into the accuracy of the voter rolls. This is exactly the data that Judicial Watch was analyzing. In 2017, they identified irregularities like this in several states and sent “notice of violation” letters to twelve (12) states and 113 counties in those states identifying discrepancy in their voter rolls.  Judicial Watch filed several lawsuits over the next five years trying to get the states to comply with the law. Here are just a few outcomes from their lawsuits.
- California – Just in Los Angeles County alone, Judicial Watch identified 1.6 million inactive names yet only 33 were removed by the county over a four-year period (2017 – 2021); discrepancies were also found in five other counties.
- North Carolina – April 2020, Judicial Watch identified 430,000 ineligible names on the voter rolls; the state subsequently agreed to clean up their database and remove the 430,000 names.
- New York – In New York City alone, Judicial Watch got them to remove 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls; Like LA County, NYC with 5.5+ million voters had removed only 22 names over the prior six-year period; six other counties in New York were also targeted.
- Pennsylvania – 800,000 ineligible names removed in April 2020.
Judicial Watch has been actively looking at all the states but other states where they have sued and won include Kentucky, considered one of the dirtiest of voter rolls, Arkansas, Illinois, Oregon with two counties in particular, Ohio and Indiana. Across the 50 states, 35 states had counties with more registered voters than voting age citizens.
We all know that dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections and fraud.
The courts consider that any state with voter registration rates close to or above 100% of the age-eligible citizenry is a strong indication a jurisdiction is not managing their voter rolls. Add to this the number of states that legalized mail-in ballots and send out ballots to everyone on their voter rolls. Robert Popper is proud of Judicial Watch’s efforts to enforce NRVA, but strongly feels that the Department of Justice should be leading this work as they have far greater resources than a private non-profit like Judicial Watch.
Does anyone think that this lack of adherence to a law and the Department of Justice not enforcing the law could undermine the accuracy of the election in these jurisdictions? It is clear from Judicial Watch’s investigations that this has been going on for a while. By itself, it is enough to raise the question about election integrity! You may want to find out for your own jurisdiction the number of registered voters versus the number of citizens of voting age.
Here is one way to do that. The Epoch Times in their March 8th newspaper showcased the work of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit law firm dedicated to election integrity, that launched a new web site on February 27, 2023. “The data provided on the website is designed to encourage some defiant state election officials to comply with the NVRA.” The website is an “interactive database available for free to individual citizens and election reform groups across the country to help in the fight to get all states to obey a federal election law mandating regular voter roll maintenance.”
You may also consider supporting Judicial Watch’s efforts to ensure clean elections, one of many nefarious, unlawful activities they are tracking on our Federal and State Governments, our politicians and adhering to the law of the land in general. Not the check and balance our Founding Fathers envisioned but maybe our reality going forward.
[1] According to U.S. Census data, 11% of citizens move each year.
[2] Popper, enforced the NRVA during his eight years with the Department of Justice bringing consent decrees to Maine, Indiana, and New Jersey
