Judicial Watch - In Wake of Election Integrity Victory in Virginia, Judicial Watch, True the Vote Shift Focus to Indianas Dirty Voter Rolls Last week I reported to you that Judicial Watch and its partner the Allied Educational Fund (AEF) filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, supporting the Virginia Board of Elections plan to remove as many as 57,000 voters deemed ineligible from the Virginia voter registration rolls as required by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). Well, as the Update was hitting your in-box, we got some very exciting news in this case. As we urged, the federal court denied a petition by the Democratic Party of Virginia to put a stop to the states removal of ineligible voters. Per the ruling issued by The Honorable Claude M. Hilton: [The Democratic Party of Virginia] has not presented evidence of any individual who has been deprived of their right to vote. Those individuals who are registered in another state and have thus been correctly removed from the Virginia voter rolls have suffered no harm. ...the Commonwealth has a compelling interest in preventing voter fraud and maintaining accurate voter registration rolls. Allowing ineligible voters to cast a vote in Virginia when they are at the same time registered to vote in another state would cut against this valid interest in maintaining accurate voter registration rolls. In reading the judges ruling, it strikes me as such a classic example of common sense that I cannot believe the Democratic Party needs to be told by a federal court that its not okay for voters to vote twice! But such is the case in the land of Obama/ACORN/Project Vote. Heres the statement I offered to the press: We are pleased that Judge Hilton affirmed the commonsense notion that Virginia can remove the names ineligible voters, tens of thousands of whom seem to be registered to vote in more than one state. It is shameful that the organized Left is standing against election integrity measures such as voter ID and clean voter rolls. For its part, Judicial Watch, through its Election Integrity Project, is committed to battling the coordinated efforts to undermine clean elections across the country. And speaking of our Election Integrity Project, JW and another partner, True the Vote, took a step forward in our joint lawsuit against the State of Indiana for failing to maintain clean voter registration lists. (True the Vote is a citizens watchdog dedicated to securing the integrity of Americas elections. By the way, for that, it has been targeted by the Obama IRS and other federal agencies!) On October 11, 2013, we filed a motion for summary judgment presenting the court with the following new evidence gathered against Indiana over the past 15 months of litigation: The Indiana Election Division Co-Directors frequently disagreed... concerning voter list maintenance, preventing Indiana from initiating numerous voter list maintenance programs. Indiana has taken a mostly passive approach to voter list maintenance, even though states are required to actively lead, direct, and oversee a list maintenance program under the NVRA. Though the Indiana Department of Health is required by Indiana law to obtain out-of-state death information from other states for purposes of assisting the Election Division to maintain the voter registration rolls, for several years it has failed to comply with Indiana law in this regard. Indianas voter rolls were inaccurate due to a general failure to adequately identify voters who had died out-of-state or relocated out-of-state Local Indiana election officials testified that they cannot effectively undertake efforts to maintain voter registration rolls unless the Indiana State Government coordinates the participation of as many as 6 separate Indiana state offices and local election officials in all 92 Indiana counties. Judicial Watch and True the Votes expert witness, former Georgia Secretary of State and Chief Election Official Karen Handel, concluded that Indiana has failed to conduct even the most basic list maintenance program to ensure reasonably accurate voter rolls. Arguing that Indiana has violated NVRA Section 8s requirement to conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters, the Judicial Watch/True the Vote motion cited the following reasonable activities the state of Indiana failed to undertake: Conduct a statewide mailing to all registered voters pursuant to the NVRA to identify voters who have moved; Ensure that the Indiana Department of Health obtains death information from other states via the State and Territorial Exchange of Vital Events (STEVE) and Electronic Verification of Vital Events (EVVE) interstate systems and provides the information to the Election Division for list maintenance; Obtain the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) from the federal government and provide appropriate information from the SSDI to each local official; Enter the Interstate Voter Registration Cross-Check (IVRC) program for the identification of Indiana voters who move out-of-state; Obtain the National Change of Address (NCOA) database from the U.S. Postal Service to identify relocated voters; and Obtain access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to identify non-citizen registered voters. The Judicial Watch/True the Vote motion also alleges Indiana has neglected to undertake reasonable oversight activities, including a failure to conduct adequate training and instruction of local elections officials, to monitor the list maintenance performance of local officials on a regular basis, and to provide state funding to local officials to carry out list maintenance programs. Catherine Englebrecht, president of True the Vote, noted that the facts and the rule of law stand against Indiana in a statement to the press: When the state admits in court its continued inability to share basic information between agencies to maintain voter rolls, then we have a serious breakdown in the execution of our most basic of civil rights. Indiana has been reprimanded before for these procedural breakdowns by the Department of Justice - the actions taken by True the Vote and Judicial Watch are intended to ensure that justice will be served. Our lawsuit has documented beyond any doubt the utter failure of Indianas election officials to maintain accurate and current voter registration rolls. This failure is not only a violation of federal law, but it harms citizens confidence in the integrity of elections and undermines the stability and effectiveness of the electoral system. Unfortunately, Indiana has rejected multiple offers to settle this case. So once again, a federal court may have to intervene to force Indiana officials to obey the law and clean up Indianas voting rolls. If you want to read about the history of our litigation against Indiana and our other election integrity measures, click here. Judicial Watch and True the Vote, along with a few other conservative organizations and lawyers, are part of a small platoon defending against the Obama Lefts assault on free and fair elections. I like our odds! But you should know (and you should let your family, friends, and neighbors know) that the stakes for our nation are enormous. Of course, at the center of the Lefts efforts to steal elections is the community organization ACORN, which continues to make news even after allegedly going out of business for good. Read on...
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 21:25:53 +0000