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A new lawsuit taking aim at outdated voter rolls in the state of California has been filed by the constitutional watchdog group Judicial Watch, arguing for the enforcement of Section Eight of the National Voter Registration Act.
According to JW, the lawsuit was filed in cohesion with the Libertarian Party of California. It asks the state to comply with the NVRA of 1993, which requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove” ineligible voters from their voter rolls.
This can include the names of those who moved out of state, those who have changed addresses, or those who have died. Via JW’s official statement on the lawsuit:
“In 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed that such removals are mandatory. In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since the year before, under the terms of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in 2017. (Legal pressure from Judicial Watch ultimately led to the removal of up to four million ineligible voters from voter rolls in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, and elsewhere.)”
JW President Tom Fitton explained, “Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. And California’s voting rolls continue to be a mess.”
He noted that because of JW’s litigation, more than one million “outdated names” have been removed from California’s state voter rolls. However, their lawsuit identified 21 counties where five or fewer names were removed in response to NVRA-designated maintenance, and another 16 counties where there were no records available to give a number on how many were removed.
The Golden State has come under intense scrutiny for its beleaguered election operations, leading some to even postulate that California itself may be much more conservative than it appears, were it not for allegedly “corrupt” election processes.
President Donald Trump stated earlier this year that he believed that he could win California in a presidential race if the elections weren’t “so corrupt.”
In 2024, election integrity has been a paramount issue for many Americans. The Republican National Committee has even kick-started an election integrity operation ahead of the November presidential election. Per RSBN, the GOP is working on hiring 100,000 people nationwide to launch the operation, which will focus on securing election processes before, during, and after Election Day.
Key battleground states have also begun to tighten their election processes in anticipation of the general election this fall. Pennsylvania, for example, recently won big on election integrity when an appeals court upheld a mandate requiring handwritten dates that are verifiably accurate on mail-in ballots.
According to a 2023 survey from Rasmussen Reports, 56 percent of Americans expect cheating to affect the presidential election in 2024, along with 31 percent who believe it is “very likely.” This seems to illustrate just how much Americans are aware of the doubts and shadows plaguing their election system.