DC removing over 100,000 ineligible voters from 'dirty voter rolls' following Judicial Watch pressure campaign

The governmental transparency outfit Judicial Watch appears to have executed a successful pressure campaign to rid select voter lists of multitudes of ineligible voters in the District of Columbia.

Judicial Watch notified election officials in D.C., California, and Illinois that they had violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 "based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls."

While officials in California and Illinois have time left to act before Judicial Watch makes good on its threat of legal action, D.C. has indicated it has already begun taking remedial steps.

The watchdog claimed in a Sept. 22 letter to the Monica Holman Evans, executive of the District of Columbia Board of Elections, that the board was in violation of Section 8 of the NVRA requiring it to "conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters for DC."

The letter cited D.C. data provided to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission indicating zero voter registrations had been removed from November 2020 to November 2022.

According to the watchdog, EAC data showed the number of inactive registrations in the district amounted to nearly one-quarter of the total number of Washington's registrations. Moreover, the notice stated "DC’s total registration rate — its total number of registrations divided by the most recent census estimates of its citizen voting-age population — is over 131%."

Judicial Watch wrote, "In our experience, and as a matter of common sense, there is no possible way that the DC BOE is complying with the NVRA if it remove no registrations pursuant to that provision in a two-year period."

The watchdog threatened to file a federal lawsuit unless the violations were corrected within 90 days.

Evans evidently blinked, telling Judicial Watch in a letter last month that the board had taken "several list maintenance actions," including the removal of 65,544 inactive voters on Oct. 30 who had allegedly voted in neither the 2016 nor 2020 general elections.

Evans further noted that an additional 37,962 "inactive" voters would soon be removed who had not voted in the 2018 general election, responded to address confirmation notices, or participated in the November 2022 general election.

While thousands of inactive voters were moved off the list, 73,522 voters were moved from "active to an inactive status on October 3, 2023 as a result of the 2023 biennial canvass process."

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement, "Dirty voter rolls increase the potential for voter fraud."

"As Washington, DC's, quick cleanup of tens of thousands of names in response to Judicial Watch shows, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of names on the voter rolls that should be removed by California and Illinois," added Fitton.

Although earlier this year, California saw over 1.2 million ineligible voters taken off rolls in Los Angeles County, the watchdog suggested that 46 counties in the state, containing over 14 million voters, "reported removing only a handful, or no registrations under the NVRA's change of address rules, or else failed to report any data at all."

Illinois similarly appears to have trouble dropping ineligible voters from its lists, with 15 counties indicating zero removals from November 2020 to November 2022, according to EAC reports.

Judicial Watch also noted in its letter to Bernadette Matthews, executive director of the Illinois State Board of Elections, that "15 Illinois jurisdictions have more voter registrations than citizens of voting age."

It appears this is a problem for other states as well.

The Republican National Committee demanded Friday that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson clean up her state's voter rolls, citing a recent analysis showing 55 of Michigan's 83 counties have more registered voters than adults 18 or older, reported the Detroit Free Press.

"More than 50 Michigan counties have a 100% or higher rate of voter registration," said RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

"This is mathematically impossible and means that ineligible voters are on the rolls ahead of the upcoming 2024 election," continued the chairwoman. "The RNC is demanding that Michigan ensure only eligible voters can vote and will take legal action to ensure that outcome if necessary."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!