Judicial Watch and Election Integrity Project California Both Work to Restore Voter Confidence Nationwide

In the wake of proposals to change voting laws and practices due to COVID-19, Judicial Watch Inc. and Election Integrity Project California Inc. call on lawmakers and election officials to renew their commitment to another important voting rights issue: the urgent need to clean up voter registration rolls and ensure that elections cannot be manipulated through weak laws and practices that erode voter confidence.

For more than two decades, Judicial Watch has been known for its aggressive, leading edge use of public records laws and lawsuits, as well as taxpayer, civil rights, and whistleblower protection litigation to fight government corruption.  In 2012, it launched a nationwide effort to promote voting integrity and protect voting rights.  As part of this effort, Judicial Watch has assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who have fought gerrymandering in Maryland, stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.  In April 2020, Judicial Watch’s voting rights team filed lawsuits in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to compel the clean-up of voter rolls in five counties in those states.  Judicial Watch is headquartered in Washington, DC.

Since 2010, Election Integrity Project California has worked to enable citizens to become active participants in the entire election process.  Its Data Analysis Group™ uses proprietary analysis techniques to research the accuracy of the voter rolls and report to officials duplicated, deceased and other ineligible registrations.  This helps ensure compliance with federal and state list maintenance laws.  Its Election Procedures Observations Program™ has resulted in providing documentation of the chaos in the election process due, in part, to bloated voter rolls.  Based in Santa Clarita, California, Election Integrity Project California has recently expanded its efforts to include Arizona, Nevada and Arkansas.

Judicial Watch and Election Integrity Project California joined forces in 2017 to challenge the failure of election officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento to clean up Los Angeles County’s voter rolls. A 2019 settlement of that lawsuit caused changes in California’s statewide voter maintenance procedures and has the potential to result in the removal of some 1.5 million inactive registrations from Los Angeles County’s voter rolls.

In this election year, Judicial Watch and Election Integrity Project California jointly call upon all nonpartisan organizations interested in promoting genuinely fair and honest elections to coordinate their efforts across the election process.

“Confidence in voter rolls is a civil rights issue,” declared Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “If voters don’t have confidence that voter rolls are updated regularly, it undermines the integrity of our elections.”

Bob Popper, who leads Judicial Watch’s voter roll clean-up efforts, explained, “We look for counties that aren’t taking steps mandated by federal law or have more registered voters than citizens over the age of 18 who could lawfully register to vote.  These are red flags and indicate that election officials may not be complying with their voter list maintenance obligations.  We then request records from state and county election officials to see what efforts they are making to clean up their voter rolls.  After analyzing the records, we work with officials in state and counties that fall short to educate them about their obligations and to encourage them to comply with the law.”

Linda Paine, President of Election Integrity Project California, said that “As co-plaintiffs in the 2017 lawsuit, our organization’s evidence was instrumental in getting Los Angeles County to agree to update its voter rolls.  Since then, our Election Integrity Project® identified significant structural flaws in California’s VoteCal voter database. Our Election Integrity Project® alerted the California Secretary of State to those flaws, and pointed out multiple incidents of double voting by mail in the March 3, 2020 primary, which he confirmed was double voting by duplicated registrants who had each received two mail ballots.”

Paine added, “Our Election Integrity Project® recently served notice on the California Secretary of State for violations of the National Voter Registration Act, after identifying hundreds of thousands of registration irregularities.  Our work has exposed the urgent need to clean the voter lists, especially with potential all-mail elections on the horizon.”

Judicial Watch is a conservative, non-partisan, tax-exempt educational organization under Internal Revenue Code section 50l(c)(3).  Its motto is “Because no one is above the law!®.”  For more information about Judicial Watch and its many programs, visit its website at www.judicialwatch.org.

Election Integrity Project California is a non-partisan, non-profit, tax-exempt, public benefit corporation and is a public charity under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3).  Its motto is “Every Lawfully Cast Vote Accurately Counted®.”  For more information about working with the Election Integrity Project® in California, Arizona, Arkansas and Nevada, visit its website at www.eip-ca.com or contact Linda Paine at (661) 313-5251.