Judicial Watch Asks Court to Reject Effort to Shut Down Lawsuit to Clean Up Voter Rolls in Illinois

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it asked a federal court to reject the State of Illinois’ motion to dismiss and end Judicial Watch’s National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) lawsuit to clean up 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 United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of Judicial Watch on behalf of Judicial Watch and the nonprofit organizations Illinois Family Action, Breakthrough Ideas, and Carol J. Davis, who is a lawfully 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 a combined total of only 100 registrations in the last two-year reporting period under a crucial provision of the NVRA. This is an “absurdly small” number, and there “is no possible way these counties can be conducting a general program that makes reasonable effort to cancel registrations of voters who have become ineligible because of a change of residence while removing so few registrations.”

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 NVRA], the complaint also listed counties who lack data that is crucial to list maintenance efforts under the NVRA. Again relying on Defendants’ own admissions to the EAC [Election Assistance Commission], the complaint notes that 34 counties could only report “Data not available” regarding Confirmation Notice removals, and 19 of these reported the same thing for death removals. In addition, 29 counties reported “Data not available” regarding the number of Confirmation Notices sent, and 22 counties said the same thing about the number of inactive registrations. In all, “[f]ifty-two of 108 Illinois jurisdictions failed to report any data to the EAC in one or more of the crucial data categories identified above.” For her part, Defendant Matthews confirmed that she “does not have access to local election authorities’ list maintenance records.” Apparently, no one in Illinois has access to this data.

Judicial Watch argues:

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

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

3. Defendants have failed to retain and provide to Plaintiffs NVRA-related records they are required to provide. The support for these allegations derives primarily from Defendants’ own admissions, in response to a survey conducted every two years by the federal Election Assistance Commission as it prepares a mandatory report to Congress, and in their correspondence with Plaintiffs.

“Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections, and Illinois’ voting rolls are a mess,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Rather than trying to shut down our lawsuit, Illinois should take immediate steps to clean its rolls to both prevent fraud and increase voter confidence in the elections.”

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

Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads its election law program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements in dozens of states.

In May 2024, Judicial Watch sued California to force the clean-up of its voter rolls. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Judicial Watch and the Libertarian Party of California, asks the court to compel 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, notifying them of evident 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 removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The letters threatened federal lawsuits unless the violations were corrected in a timely fashion. In response to Judicial Watch’s inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.” NVRA lawsuits subsequently were commenced against California and Illinois.

In July 2023 Judicial Watch filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, supporting 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 list (Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Shenna Bellows (No. 23-1361). According to a national study conducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide registration rate was 101% of eligible voters.

Judicial Watch in July 2023 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 director, which now grants 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 and admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258 ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial Watch. The settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to extensive public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll clean-up efforts for the next five years.

In March 2023, Colorado agreed to settle a Judicial Watch NVRA lawsuit alleging 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 each Colorado county each year for six years.

In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed the removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last year, under the terms of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in 2017.

Judicial Watch settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter registration lists.

Kentucky also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In February 2022, Judicial Watch settled a voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its counties after North Carolina removed over 430,000 inactive registrations from its voter rolls.

In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled in favor of Judicial Watch’s challenge to the Democratic state legislature’s “extreme” congressional-districts gerrymander.

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