(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Constitution Party of Oregon and two lawfully registered voters of Umatilla County and Marion County, Oregon, against Lavonne Griffin-Valade in her official capacity as Oregon Secretary of State and the State of Oregon, to make “a reasonable effort to remove” the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rolls as required by federal law (Judicial Watch, et al. v. The State of Oregon et al. (No. 6:24-cv-01783)). The suit was filed to enforce basic voter list maintenance provisions under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
The National Voter Registration Act 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. The law 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. In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since the year before, under the terms of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in 2017. (Legal pressure from Judicial Watch ultimately led to the removal of up to four million ineligible voters from voter rolls in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, and elsewhere.)
Judicial Watch filed the latest lawsuit after uncovering a broad failure to clean up voter rolls in dozens of Oregon counties.
In its complaint, Judicial Watch argues that Oregon’s voter rolls contain large numbers of old, inactive registrations; and that 29 of Oregon’s 36 counties removed few or no registrations as required by federal election law. Judicial Watch asserts that Oregon and 35 of its counties had overall registration rates exceeding 100%; and that Oregon has the highest known inactive registration rate of any state in the nation. In combination, all of these facts show that Oregon is failing to remove inactive registrations pursuant to Section 8(d)(1)(B) of the NVRA. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oregon, Eugene Division, to compel the defendants to comply with their voter list maintenance obligations under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
“Dirty voter rolls can mean dirty elections,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Oregon has among the dirtiest voting rolls in America and needs to clean them up ASAP!”
Judicial Watch is a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of its work, Judicial Watch assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls across the country, among other achievements.
Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads its election law program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting rights investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements in dozens of states.
In September, Judicial Watch argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit regarding a lower court ruling on Mississippi’s election law that permits absentee ballots to be received as late as five business days after Election Day.
In a similar lawsuit, in 2022, Judicial Watch, on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two other registered voters, sued Illinois for allowing vote-by-mail ballots (even those without postmarks) to be counted if received up to 14 calendar days after Election Day if the ballots are dated on or before Election Day.
In May 2024, Judicial Watch sued California under the NVRA to force it to clean up its voter rolls. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Judicial Watch and the Libertarian Party of California, asks the court to compel California to make “a reasonable effort to remove the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rolls” as required by federal law.
In March 2024, Judicial Watch, Breakthrough Ideas, Illinois Family Action, and Carol J. Davis sued Illinois officials under the NVRA to force them to clean the State’s voter rolls.
In December 2023, a notice letter was sent to election officials in the District of Columbia notifying them of evident violations of the NVRA, based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls. The letter pointed out that D.C. publicly reported removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The letter threatened a federal lawsuit unless the violations were corrected in a timely fashion. In response to Judicial Watch’s inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.”
In July 2023 Judicial Watch filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, supporting the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which struck down Maine’s policy restricting the use and distribution of the state’s voter registration list. According to a national study conducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide registration rate was 101% of eligible voters.
Judicial Watch in July 2023 also settled a federal election integrity lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois Conservative Union against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State Board of Elections, and its director, which now grants access to the current centralized statewide list of registered voters for the state for the past 15 elections.
In April 2023, Pennsylvania settled with Judicial Watch and admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258 ineligible registrations in response to communications from Judicial Watch. The settlement commits Pennsylvania and five of its counties to extensive public reporting of statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll clean-up efforts for the next five years.
In March 2023, Colorado agreed to settle a Judicial Watch NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed to remove ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement requires Colorado to provide Judicial Watch with the most recent voter roll data for each Colorado county each year for six years.
In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed the removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last year, under the terms of a settlement agreement in a federal lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in 2017.
Judicial Watch settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter registration lists.
Kentucky also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.
Judicial Watch is being assisted by Stephen Joncus of Joncus Law PC in Happy Valley, Oregon.
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