Group sues over voters placed on ‘inactive’ list
Right-leaning Judicial Watch says county is violating federal law.
SACRAMENTO — A Washington-based conservative-leaning activist group filed a federal lawsuit last week, alleging Los Angeles County officials are “refusing to cancel the registrations” of voters who are ineligible to cast a ballot.
The legal action on Wednesday by Judicial Watch comes four months after the organization first accused elections officials across the state of maintaining registration lists that are larger than their voting-age population. The lawsuit also names Secretary of State Alex Padilla as a defendant and alleges the voter lists violate the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA.
“They don’t care about removing ineligible registration,” said Robert Popper of Judicial Watch. “I think we have a very strong lawsuit.”
The lawsuit names four Los Angeles County voters as co-plaintiffs and asserts that a county’s two lists of voters — the file of active voters and those whose registration has been placed on “inactive” status — should be combined into a single total.
The inactive list includes people who haven’t cast ballots in recent elections and haven’t responded to inquiries from elections officials. Though the names on that list are considered voters, they are not counted in official registration reports and are not mailed election material.
Popper led an effort this year to estimate the size of each county’s voting-age population using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. He said the survey’s five-year average of county populations was then adjusted by focusing just on the estimate of those over the age of 18, and then comparing that with the combined active and inactive voter lists.
Popper dismissed any concern that the resulting number might be skewed by the different standards used by counties for the inactive list, which could include names of voters who moved or died and thus be an imperfect guide.
“I believe that a court is going to accept our numbers,” he said.
Dean Logan, the registrar of voters in Los Angeles County, said his staff’s practices are consistent with federal law. “This lawsuit appears to fundamentally interpret the requirements of the NVRA in a manner inconsistent with ensuring voter enfranchisement and appropriate list maintenance,” he said.
The lawsuit also alleges that Los Angeles elections officials failed to provide Judicial Watch with requested data about the size of the inactive list, and accuses Padilla of failing to address the group’s concerns about California not following NVRA rules.
In a statement Thursday, Padilla said county inactive-voter files are not out of compliance with the law. He criticized Judicial Watch for its “baseless assertions, bad math, and flawed methodology.”
Local elections officials have said very few “inactive” voters show up on election day, and that any who do would be asked to cast a provisional ballot — one that isn’t counted unless the voter’s eligibility is confirmed through additional review. Popper insisted that if the list is never used, there’s no reason to keep it.
Judicial Watch, which sued for access to Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, alleged that its calculations show 11 California counties with questionable voter registration totals.