Truing the Voter Rolls, Voter Integrity Project

True the Vote is proud to announce that it is teaming with Judicial Watch on an election integrity project to pressure the states to clean up voter registration rolls to satisfy Section 8 of the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), a law that all too many states have been violating for years.

Judicial Watch and True The Vote have sent letters to California, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida — others are also being considered — demanding that they satisfy the law or face lawsuits to attempt to force them to obey the law. Section 8 of the NVRA requires that each state makes “a reasonable effort” to assure that voter rolls are current and correct but for years many states haven’t purged their voting rolls of people that have passed away, left the state, or are otherwise no longer legitimately enrolled. The result is that many states have more voters on the rolls than they have in voting-age population. The letters to the states reads in part:

Allowing the names of ineligible voters to remain on the voting rolls harms the integrity of the electoral process and undermines voter confidence in the legitimacy of elections… As the top election officials… it is your responsibility under federal law to conduct a program that reasonably ensures that the lists of eligible voters are accurate…

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Judicial Watch urges the states to satisfy the law but warns it will take action if they don’t.

We hope our concerns can be resolved amicably. However, with the November 2012 election on the horizon and in the light of the importance of Section 8 of the NVRA to ensuring the integrity and legitimacy of the electoral process, we must emphasize the importance of timeliness. According, if we believe that you do not intend to correct the above-identified problems, a lawsuit seeking declamatory and injunctive relief may be necessary.

Judicial Watch also notes that there was “significant” election fraud in the 2008 and 2010 elections with employees of ACORN/Project Vote in 12 states having been convicted of engaging in voter registration fraud. “As documented in a July 2009 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of the 1.3 million registrations Project Vote/ACORN submitted in the 2008 election cycle, more than one-third were invalid,” according to Judicial Watch. At a press conference held at CPAC announcing the letters sent by Judicial Watch, True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht said that what we are all doing at CPAC “presupposes that our system has integrity.” Sadly, it appears that the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder has little interest in forcing the states to obey Section 8. Since coming to office Obama’s DOJ have made no effort to enforce the law. “President Obama and the Holder Justice Department evidently have no interest in clean elections this year, so this responsibility has now fallen to Judicial Watch. And given the rampant election fraud that occurred during the last two election cycles, this is a matter of the highest priority as we head into the 2012 election season. It is simply impossible to have any faith in the integrity of an election were dead people remain on the voting rolls. This is a recipe for voter fraud and stolen elections,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fritton.