An ethics and legal watchdog is poised to sue at least one state government over its failure to remove dead and ineligible persons from its voter rolls ahead of a too-close-to-call presidential election.
The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch reports it “sent a notice letter to the Oregon secretary of state on behalf of itself, the Constitution Party of Oregon and an Oregon registered voter, 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.”
Judicial Watch warned Oregon legal action may follow if voter rolls are not brought into legal compliance, noting “the notice letter to Oregon serves as a ‘pre-suit’ notice.”
“Dirty election rolls can mean dirty elections,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “With a presidential election less than four months away, it is vital that Oregon get about the business of cleaning its voter registration rolls of ineligible voters to eliminate any cloud of doubt over the legitimacy of its balloting.”
Oregon has not elected a Republican governor in 37 years and has not sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 16 years.
“States are required by federal law to report data concerning their removal programs to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC). Every few years the EAC publishes this data as part of a report it provides to Congress. The most recent report and accompanying datasets were released in June of this year,” Judicial Watch reports.
“The NVRA requires states to ‘conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove” from the official voter rolls “the names of ineligible voters’ who have died or changed residence,” Judicial Watch notes, adding “Among other things, the NVRA requires registrations to be cancelled when voters fail to respond to address confirmation notices and then fail to vote in the next two general federal elections. In 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed that such removals are mandatory.”
The letter states:
According to your state’s responses to the EAC’s [federal government’s Election Assistance Commission] survey, 19 Oregon counties reported removing zero voter registrations from November 2020 to November 2022 pursuant to Section 8(d)(1)(B) of the NVRA for failing to respond to a Confirmation Notice and failing to vote in two consecutive general federal elections. Another 10 counties reported just a handful of such removals during the same two-year period.
Furthermore, not a single one of Oregon’s 36 counties reported any data whatsoever to the EAC regarding inactive registrations. Instead, in the relevant column where the data should have been, the survey response for each of Oregon’s counties merely stated, “Data not available.”
***
Oregon’s non-compliance with the NVRA is further illustrated by the unusually high registration rates observed in several of its counties. Comparing the data your state reported to the EAC regarding the total registrations for each county to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent five-year estimates of the numbers of resident citizens over the age of eighteen suggests that eight Oregon counties have more voter registrations than citizens of voting age. Several federal courts have determined that such high registration rates are sufficient grounds for alleging a failure to comply with the NVRA’s requirement to make reasonable efforts to remove voters by reason of death or change of address.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
Some blue states obviously don’t want to clean up their voter rolls because it might show their state voters the corruptness that has been going on for years.
Do a history check on the State of Oregon. It used to be a “white’s only” state. Most people don’t know that. IRONY