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PILF Client Inks Comprehensive Settlement in South Texas Voter Roll Suit

Agreement Outlines Maintenance, Training Reforms for Texas County

(McALLEN, TX.) – September 18, 2018: Public Interest Legal Foundation client American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) entered a settlement agreement outlining the most comprehensive strategy to date aimed at improving the quality of voter registration records, practices, and training for Starr County, Texas (ACRU v. Rodriguez et. al. 7:16-cv-00103).

Below is a summary of action items and new maintenance strategies agreed to by the parties as outlined in the agreement:

Deceased Voter Removals: Starr County will actively seek out evidence and investigative leads to identify deceased registered voters and remove them according to Texas and federal law. The County agrees to utilize all available databases provided by the State and institute in-house measures to review area obituaries. The ACRU agrees to offer its own research tools and techniques for identifying deceased registrants upon request at no cost.
Processing Duplicate Registrations: Starr County agrees to accept and process potential duplicate voter registration leads from the State within 60 days of receipt. The County will determine which registration copy to maintain while discarding the other according to Texas law. The ACRU agrees to offer its own research tools and techniques for identifying duplicate registrants upon request at no cost.
Reporting: Beginning January 2019, Starr County will provide reports to the ACRU reflecting total maintenance actions undertaken for two years for each of the aforementioned categories.
Leveraging Jury Disqualification Data: Starr County agrees to take regular delivery of state and federal jury disqualification forms where an individual was excused from duty for reasons related to citizenship, relocation out of the county, or because the individual is deceased. Those leads will be used to initiate investigations and notices to registrants in question under Texas law. Records will be canceled upon local confirmation of circumstances.
Accessing the National Change of Address (NCOA) Database: Starr County agrees to access the U.S. Postal Service’s NCOA program to identify registrants who potentially relocated out of the county without direct notice.
Prompt Processing of Ineligible Registrants: Within 60 days of this settlement, Starr County will resolve all pending maintenance actions originally flagged by the State of Texas for investigation regarding potentially ineligible registrants.
New & Improved County Procedures: Starr County agrees to collaborate with the State of Texas to develop and implement written procedures governing local list maintenance tasks.
Enhanced Training: The Texas Secretary agrees to provide classroom training for Starr County staff.
Payment of Fees: Starr County agrees to pay a portion of ACRU’s legal fees and costs.

The lawsuit initiated in March 2016 after the ACRU notified Starr County pursuant to the National Voter Registration Act in December 2015 that it was apparently in violation of federal maintenance standards due to implausibly high numbers of voters in contrast to U.S. Census counts of citizens in residence there. Federal and Texas data suggested that from 2010 to 2014, the rate of registration ranged from 100 to 110 percent – very much outside of the norm for other Texas counties of similar size. Before commencing litigation, the ACRU and Starr County could not find an amicable strategy for remedying alleged voter list maintenance failures.

Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act provides parties like the ACRU the right file a lawsuit when they believe a jurisdiction is falling out of compliance with federal mandates. In the event of a judgment in favor or preferred settlement agreement, plaintiffs may seek necessary legal fees in return.

Access a copy of the settlement agreement here.

The settlement agreement provides that the parties will dismiss the Plaintiff’s claims. The dismissal was entered in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, McAllen Division. The case number is 7:16-cv-00103.

Eric Wiesehan and attorneys for the Public Interest Legal Foundation represented the American Civil Rights Union for the duration of the case.

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. The Foundation exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, the Foundation seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections.

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PILF Applauds ‘Final Victory’ in Texas Voter ID Case

(ALEXANDRIA, VA.) – September 18, 2018: The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) today commended Texas’ “final victory” after extensive voter ID litigation.

“Texas voters can finally rest assured their ballots will be waiting only for them on Election Day,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “While the Office of the Texas Attorney General ably handled this case to protect against classic fraud, it also helped harden defenses against external influences and threats to our elections. The ‘safety net’ memorialized in Senate Bill 5 also provides a useful example that other states can and should follow to help voters in need.

“Well-funded interest groups against voter ID should take note: rather than working to weaken our systems, expend your resources to actually help people cast ballots,” Adams added.

Read more about the Texas voter ID case, here.

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. The Foundation exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, PILF seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections.

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PILF Response to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Voting Report

Report Riddled with Errors and Exaggerations for Partisan Gain

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – September 12, 2018: Leadership for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) today reacted to the findings of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ latest report outlining alleged voting access problems. Several PILF staff and board officers were invited to testify before the Commission in February 2018.

PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams notes:

“The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights isn’t living up to its historic standards. The report on voting and elections is full of errors, exaggerations, and outlandish efforts to scare minorities into thinking they won’t be able to cast a ballot. Registering to vote and voting has never been easier in the history of the United States. That fact is nowhere to be found in the document. The report reads more like a ‘Get Out the Vote’ flyer designed to benefit partisan turnout than a careful and credible report on voting. That’s a shame, and President Trump will have to very carefully examine who serves on and works for this Commission when he has the ability to appoint replacement Commissioners.”

Issues with the Report

Commission Chair Catherine E. Lhamon and USCCR staff falsely claims the report’s proposals were unanimously agreed to. Both Commissioners Peter Kirsanow and Gale Heriot voted against declaring that the Voting Rights Act should be reformed to effectively reverse Shelby County v. Holder and other matters.
The report repeatedly makes errors about a Voting Rights Act case US v. Ike Brown.
The progressive commissioners repeatedly relied on a 2012 Soros-funded News21 report to argue “there is ‘utterly no evidence’ that points to any significant level of instances of in-person voter fraud.”
Despite submissions to the contrary, the report remains silent on documented voter registration system failures occurring after 2012 where Motor Voter exposed thousands of ineligible noncitizens to the election system in several states.
The report sloppily hails automatic voter registration as a “positive measure” in general despite high-profile failures in Oregon and most recently California.
The report outlandishly accuses the Roberts Court in Shelby County of sharing “a direct line” to the violence in Charlottesville, where “alt-right, neo-Nazi, and hate groups, in their putsch-filled delusions, believe they can turn back the clock and preserve the supremacy of their self-defined racial purity.”

PILF Board Chairman Cleta D. Mitchell is credited, however, on page 266 for noting how the Commission’s behavior is demonstrative of “the grievance industry” on full display.

PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams, Board Chairman Cleta D. Mitchell, and Board Member Hans A. von Spakovsky were invited to discuss a wide range of topics during the Raleigh hearing in February 2018.

Excerpts from the PILF representatives’ prepared statements are provided below.

“One of the most effective ways to preserve the viability of civil rights laws is to remove partisan politics from civil rights enforcement. As soon as a sizeable segment of the public believes that civil rights laws are being leveraged for partisan ends, a sizeable segment of the public will stop supporting civil rights. The Voting Rights Act has enjoyed broad bipartisan support for decades. But if enforcement of the law is hijacked by partisan interests, the law will lose this bipartisan support.”

—J. Christian Adams, PILF President and General Counsel

“This Commission, with all due respect, should be about the business of gathering facts, not perpetuating myths … The recent history of litigation involving North Carolina election laws shows that the present system is working, where interest groups and litigants are having their day in court and getting their way, even when the empirical evidence discloses that minority voter turnout is not harmed by enactment of voter integrity measures. Even without preclearance requirements, federal law and the U.S. Constitution are wholly adequate to protect the right to vote.”

—Cleta D. Mitchell, Foley & Lardner Partner and PILF Board Chairman

“A review of the litigation record of the Voting Section during the administrations of Bush and Obama shows a sharp, overall downward trend in the number of enforcement actions filed by the Justice Department under the various provisions of the [Voting Rights Act] from 2001 to 2016, including after 2013, the year Shelby County was decided … [F]ive years after Shelby County, there is still no evidence of widespread, systemic, official discrimination by any of the formerly covered jurisdictions or any other state.”

—Hans A. von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow and PILF Board Member

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. The Foundation exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, PILF seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections.

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Report: At Least 3,100 Noncitizens Registered to Vote in Just 13 Sanctuary Cities

Sanctuary Cities Fail to Prosecute Alien Voting

(INDIANAPOLIS, IN.) – August 27, 2018: The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) today released Safe Spaces, a new report detailing how noncitizens were often invited and given access to ballots in 13 sanctuary jurisdictions across seven states over the past decade. The ineligible registrations were typically discovered only after noncitizens self-reported their statuses to officials. Worse, sanctuary policies have resulted in aliens who do illegally vote never being prosecuted.

Sanctuary jurisdictions in seven states disclosed various data demonstrating how noncitizens entered their voter registration systems, voted, and were later revealed to be ineligible—often taking years for discovery. In many cases, a state’s implementation of the National Voter Registration Act, also known as the “Motor Voter” law, invited noncitizens to participate in voting and relied on those same individuals to self-report their actions at their own peril.

Summary Totals of Self-Reported or Cancelled Alien Registrations

Fairfax County, VA: 1,334

Middlesex County, NJ: 346

Chesterfield County: VA: 321

Philadelphia, PA: 317

San Diego County, CA: 264

Chicago, IL: 232

Arlington, VA: 145

Essex County, NJ: 107

San Francisco County, CA: 28

DeKalb County, GA: 11

New York, NY: 6

Riverside County, CA: 6

Ocean County, NJ: 3

Noncitizen Removals: 3,120

“The failures of Motor Voter are clearly visible in sanctuary cities,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “A terrible combination of bad Motor Voter enforcement, increasing chatter over noncitizen voting rights, and simple disregard for immigration law creates an environment for illegal voting. Bad actors and unassuming immigrants are caught up in this system all the same. Congress must update and fix the flaws in the Motor Voter system.”

The Foundation advances solutions necessary to close off the voter registration system from ineligible noncitizens in the latest report:

Verify claims of citizenship in registration applications against documentary evidence held in driver’s license and other government databases;
Build better information-sharing procedures with immigration and customs agencies to prevent ineligible applicants from proceeding and identify those still masked by a broken system;
Amend several immigration applications to include questions about voting history;
Collaborate with state and federal programs designed to confirm eligibility for various benefit programs; and
Improve public education efforts to warn legal permanent residents and others to refuse voter registration offers by any party or they risk deportation when naturalizing.

The PILF is currently engaged in federal litigation to seek the release of similar documents representative of the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Harris County, Texas.

Safe Spaces follows the Foundation’s previous reports studying noncitizen voter participation in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia.

Access to Safe Spaces: How Sanctuary Cities Are Giving Cover to Noncitizens on the Voter Rolls is available, here.

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. The Foundation exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, PILF seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections.

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Safe Spaces: How Sanctuary Cities Are Giving Cover to Noncitizens on the Voter Rolls

Read Safe Spaces here.

Summary Totals of Self-Reported or Cancelled Alien Registrations

Fairfax County, VA: 1,334

Middlesex County, NJ: 346

Chesterfield County: VA: 321

Philadelphia, PA: 317

San Diego County, CA: 264

Chicago, IL: 232

Arlington, VA: 145

Essex County, NJ: 107

San Francisco County, CA: 28

DeKalb County, GA: 11

New York, NY: 6

Riverside County, CA: 6

Ocean County, NJ: 3

3,120 Noncitizen Removals

Our press release is available, here.

Access to exhibits referenced throughout can be found here.

Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin Discuss PILF’s Noncitizen Voter Findings

Originally aired August 1, 2018. Read more here.

J. Christian Adams Discusses Noncitizen Voting in PA with Tucker Carlson

Originally aired August 1, 2018.

Read Steeling the Vote and other reports regarding noncitizen voting in Virginia and New Jersey.

J. Christian Adams Discusses Noncitizen Voting in Pittsburgh with PCNC

Originally aired July 31, 2018

Report: How Noncitizens Vote in Allegheny County, PA

Pennsylvania Continues to Hide Full Scale of Alien Voting

(PITTSBURGH, PA.) – July 12, 2018: The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) today released Steeling the Vote, a special report detailing how noncitizens were invited and given access to ballots in Allegheny County over the past 12 years. The ineligible registrations were discovered only after immigrants self-reported their statuses to the County.

Amid federal litigation with the Pennsylvania Department of State for complete access to noncitizen voter registration records, Allegheny County election officials disclosed hundreds of pages detailing how noncitizens were regularly offered voter registration by government employees and third-party drives, despite language barriers and clear understandings as to what they were signing. With no comprehensive system for detecting and removing ineligible voters from the rolls, the majority of cancellations derive from noncitizens self-reporting their own deportable offenses.

Key Findings

139 instances of noncitizen voter registration and eventual cancellation were disclosed by the County from 2006 to 2018.
27 percent of noncitizens cast at least one ballot prior to removal.
Noncitizens remain registered for an average of six years before they are removed.
71 percent of noncitizens self-reported their ineligible registrations at great legal risk.
63 percent of noncitizens were registered in PennDOT transactions.
Allegheny County officials raised alarm about the system failures with the Commonwealth in 2008.

“Noncitizens have voted in Pennsylvania because Motor Voter registration is broken,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “This report proves how Pennsylvania failed citizens and immigrants alike. For decades, unassuming immigrants were invited to break the law in a systematic fashion while citizens suffered the consequences of vote dilution. Pennsylvania needs a comprehensive election integrity solution and Allegheny County clearly demonstrates what is at stake if the problem isn’t fixed. Congress must update and fix the flaws in the current Motor Voter system.”

The Allegheny County disclosures follow shocking admissions and analyses from Commonwealth and local officials regarding the decades-long practice of offering voter registration applications to all PennDOT driver’s license customers regardless of citizenship status. The report adds that one Philadelphia city commissioner publicly testified “the number of noncitizens who entered the voter registration system during the last two decades exceeded 100,000.”

The Foundation advances solutions necessary to close off the voter registration system from ineligible noncitizens in the latest report:

Verify claims of citizenship in registration applications against documentary evidence held in PennDOT and other government databases;
Collaborate with state and federal programs designed to confirm eligibility for various benefit programs; and
Improve public education efforts to warn legal permanent residents and others to refuse voter registration offers by any party or they risk deportation when naturalizing.

The PILF is currently engaged in federal litigation to seek the release of similar documents representative of the entire Commonwealth still being held by the Department of State. A lawsuit filed under the National Voter Registration Act was filed in February 2018.

Steeling the Vote follows the Foundation’s previous reports studying New Jersey and Virginia in 2017.

Access to Steeling the Vote: Allegheny County Reveals How Citizenship Verification Protects Citizens and Immigrants Alike is available, here.

Access to exhibits referenced throughout can be found, here.

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. The Foundation exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, PILF seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections.

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Steeling the Vote: Allegheny County Reveals How Citizenship Verification Protects Citizens and Immigrants Alike

Read Steeling the Vote here.

Key Findings

139 instances of noncitizen voter registration and eventual cancellation were disclosed by the County from 2006 to 2018.
27 percent of noncitizens cast at least one ballot prior to removal.
Noncitizens remain registered for an average of six years before they are removed.
71 percent of noncitizens self-reported their ineligible registrations at great legal risk.
63 percent of noncitizens were registered in PennDOT transactions.
Allegheny County officials raised alarm about the system failures with the Commonwealth in 2008.

Our press release on the report is available here.

Access to exhibits referenced throughout can be found, here.

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