The Trump Justice Department is moving toward requiring more than half of U.S. states to update and maintain their voter rolls, and a senior department official told Just the News that prosecutors believe the lapses that left deceased individuals and non-citizens listed as eligible voters in several Democrat-run states may have been intentional.
The effort is part of a broader enforcement push under federal voting-list maintenance laws, according to the official, the outlet reported.
“The sloppiness of the elections in blue states is no accident. It is on purpose. It is a feature, not a bug,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet J. Dhillon told Just the News’ streaming news program.
“And the goal is to cram as many people on there and make voters who are not particularly engaged, make it easy for someone else to help them fill out their ballot and return it for them when they didn’t care enough to do it themselves,” she added.
“What we can do at the federal government level is ensure that our federal election laws are observed, and that includes each state’s requirement to keep clean voter rolls,” she added. “That is a fundamental basic.”
Dhillon spoke one day after her division filed lawsuits against six Democrat-led states — Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Washington state and Vermont — seeking court orders requiring them to provide voter-registration records to the Justice Department. The filings state that the DOJ intends to examine the rolls for irregularities, outdated or duplicate entries, and other potential violations of federal list-maintenance requirements, the outlet reported.
She also reached an agreement last week with North Carolina requiring the state to review and correct more than 100,000 voter registrations that were added without meeting state legal requirements.
Dhillon said her office is now on track — through litigation, settlements or voluntary compliance — to require at least 26 states to update and clean their voter rolls.
“We’re now in litigation with 14 states. So the six yesterday included Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Washington State and Vermont. That adds to eight we already had going,” she said.
“We are close to reaching resolution, voluntary cooperation with another dozen states, and I won’t say which those are, but I think we will definitely let the public know when that happens,” she added. “We have voluntary cooperation from four states, and we reached a settlement in a consent decree with the state of North Carolina.”
Dhillon said the Justice Department is reviewing voter-registration records from all 50 states and has identified several jurisdictions — including California — that she described as particularly “loosey-goosey” in maintaining their lists, Just the News reported.
“There are definitely people on the voter rolls of every state who don’t belong there,” she said. “They’re dead. They’ve moved. They’re registered multiple times there. There have been reported instances of people, because of these insecure, double or extraneous registrations, going to the polls and having their vote recorded before they got there.
“Then there are clearly people on the voter rolls, including immigrants who are not citizens, and that can include legal immigrants and illegal immigrants, who are on the voter rolls,” she added.
Meanwhile, the news for Democrats isn’t good ahead of the midterms, generally speaking.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) had to secure a substantial loan in preparation for next year’s election cycle, as the party struggles with leadership and had little to demonstrate for its government shutdown efforts.
Two weeks ago, Politico reported on a filing the party mady with the Federal Election Commission concerning the $15 million loan.
“The national party committee framed the line of credit as an early investment to boost its candidates in New Jersey and Virginia earlier this month, and help build up state parties ahead of next year’s midterms. But the need for a loan still puts the DNC in sharp contrast with its GOP counterpart, the Republican National Committee, which was sitting on $86 million at the end of September,” the outlet said.