One of the most important things we can do in this election year is
continue to force states and counties across the nation to comply with the
National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (
NVRA).
And we are. We have sent
notice-of-violation
letters to 19 large counties in five states that we intend to sue
unless they take steps to comply with the law and remove ineligible voter
registrations within 90 days. Section 8 of the act requires jurisdictions
to take reasonable efforts to remove ineligible registrations from their
rolls.
Despite our successful litigation to bring counties and states into
compliance with the NVRA, voter registration lists across the country
remain significantly out of date. According to our analysis of data
released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) this year, 378
counties nationwide have more voter registrations than citizens old enough
to vote, i.e., counties where registration rates exceed 100%.
These 378 counties combined had about 2.5 million registrations over the
100%-registered mark, which is a drop of about one million from our
previous
analysis of voter registration data. Although San Diego County
removed 500,000 inactive names from voter rolls following our settlement
with Los Angeles County, San Diego still has a registration rate of 117%
and has one of the highest registration rates in the county.
Judicial Watch Attorney Robert Popper is the director of our Election
Integrity initiative. In the latest round of warning letters, we explain
that implausibly high registration rates raise legal concerns:
