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Safe Spaces: How Sanctuary Cities Are Giving Cover to Noncitizens on the Voter Rolls
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.
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
“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.”
Our press release is available, here.
Access to exhibits referenced throughout can be found here.
Steeling the Vote: Allegheny County Reveals How Citizenship Verification Protects Citizens and Immigrants Alike
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.
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.
“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.”
Our press release on the report is available here.
Access to exhibits referenced throughout can be found, here.
248 Counties Have More Registered Voters Than Live Adults
24 States Show Corrupted Voter Rolls
(INDIANAPOLIS, IN.) – September 25, 2017: The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) today announced that it placed 248 counties on notice for holding more registered voters than adult residents in their respective jurisdictions. Officials in 24 states now risk lawsuits if they do not disclose satisfactory data demonstrating effective voter roll maintenance efforts before and after the 2016 Election.
“During the 2016 Election, 24 states had bloated voter rolls,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “Voter fraud begins with corrupted voter rolls. Our nation’s voter rolls have records that cannot be distinguished between living or dead; citizen or alien; resident or relocated. We hear about possible cyber-attacks, but we aren’t doing enough to fix voter rolls that are certainly corrupt. The voter rolls are so bad in some states that election officials would have a hard time telling the difference between sabotage and negligence.”
Letters mailed to the counties and locales in question note that it appears they are violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) because they are not properly maintaining the voter rolls. The NVRA (also known as Motor Voter) requires state and local election officials to properly maintain voter rolls and ensure that only eligible voters are registered. Holding more registrants than living adults indicates that election officials have failed to properly maintain voter rolls.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation has a distinguished record of bringing litigation against counties and locales with bloated voter rolls—yielding settlements and consent decrees that, if followed properly, will put jurisdictions on a path to more realistic voter registration rates. PILF has been involved in bringing nine separate lawsuits in the last two years to enforce list maintenance provisions of the NVRA, including in Texas, Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania. PILF recently completed the first trial in the history of the NVRA to enforce list maintenance obligations. The case was brought on behalf of the American Civil Rights Union against Broward County, Florida.
States with counties that received a notice letter are (# of counties): Kentucky (41), Michigan (32), Iowa (31), Illinois (22), Mississippi (19), Colorado (17), Texas (12), Alabama (12), South Dakota (12), Nebraska (9), Georgia (6), New York (6), West Virginia (6), New Mexico (5), North Carolina (5), California (2), Louisiana (2), Montana (2), Virginia (2), Arizona (1), Florida (1), Missouri (1), Oklahoma (1), and Washington State (1).
Kentucky’s surpassing Michigan as the most bloated state is particularly concerning giving the Secretary of State’s belligerent, public refusals to share voter data with the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, despite the State’s offering of the same information here.
“Federal law requires election officials to conduct a reasonable effort to maintain voter registration lists free of dead voters, ineligible voters, and voters who have moved away,” the notice letters state. “Based on our comparison of publicly available information published by the U.S. Census Bureau and the federal Election Assistance Commission, it appears that your jurisdiction is failing to comply with these federal law requirements.”
The notices seek a variety of documents to clearly discern which jurisdictions are failing to perform basic voter list maintenance duties. Some records sought concern: noncitizen voters; numbers of dead, duplicate, relocated, and felon removals; evidence of use for databases which better identify relocated or alien registrants; and third-party communications about voter rolls, among others.
If a local official fails to respond to PILF’s letter or declines to allow inspection of election records, they risk a federal lawsuit.
A listing off all jurisdictions recently given notice under the NVRA can be found, here.
A copy of an example notice letter sent may be reviewed, 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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Garden State Gotcha: How Opponents of Citizenship Verification for Voting Are Putting New Jersey’s Noncitizens at Risk of Deportation
After a six-month review of New Jersey county voter registration files, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found numerous enforcement flaws for the National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter) that unnecessarily expose noncitizens to future naturalization challenges and even deportation without clearly-justified reforms.
The original PDF report is available here.
Summary Findings:
- 1,069 admitted and officially recorded noncitizens in 11 counties engaged on some level with the NJ voter registration system;
- 37 percent of aliens self-reporting their status also cast ballots prior;
- 78 percent of noncitizens were invited to register while receiving driver’s licenses or in other government transactions like community college admissions or public schools; and
- Eight counties, including one “sanctuary county”, claimed to have never seen noncitizens registered or applying to vote.
“It’s time to have a serious discussion about modernizing our Motor Voter law and determine how we can verify citizenship in the process,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “Anyone who disagrees exposes Americans to vote dilution and helps write one-way tickets for deportees.”
Our press release on the report is here.
Access to evidentiary exhibits referenced throughout can be found, here.
This report was updated in October 2017 to reflect the review of Essex and Middlesex Counties.
Best Practices for Achieving Integrity in Voter Registration
Best Practices for Achieving Integrity in Voter Registration offers state and local governments expert guidance on cutting-edge strategies and techniques in maintaining voter rolls for an increasingly mobile electorate.
PILF relied upon experts in election administration and previous experience in state and federal election oversight to collaborate in composing the report, outlining the following:
- Seek upgrades to statewide voter registration system software—some of which date back to the mid-2000s;
- Engage with voter roll maintenance cooperatives like Voter Registration Crosscheck (IVRC) and Electronic Voter Registration Center (ERIC);
- Perform statewide voter list audits;
- Upgrade procedures for identifying deceased voters;
- More closely follow federal datasets indicating voter relocation;
- Perform annual voter outreach;
- Perform voter education campaigns;
- Provide improved online tools for self-updates of voter data;
- Establish citizenship verification data sources;
- Provide uniform updates of quarterly voter list maintenance, and more.
You can access Best Practices for Achieving Integrity in Voter Registration, here.
The PILF press release announcing the report is here.
Alien Invasion II: The Sequel to the Discovery and Cover-up of Non-citizen Registration and Voting in Virginia
The Public Interest Legal Foundation published a sequel report based on voting history records in Virginia showing that large numbers of ineligible aliens are registering to vote and casting ballots. In some Virginia jurisdictions, the number of people registered to vote exceeds the number of citizens eligible to vote.
The full PDF report is available here.
Summary Findings:
- Virginia election officials quietly removed 5,556 voters for non-citizenship between 2011 and May 2017;
- 1,852 of those removed as noncitizens cast ballots;
- A total of 7,474 illegal ballots were cast from the pool of removed noncitizens;
- Some records of illegal voting date back to the 1980s before their respective removals;
- Virginia election officials routinely fail to alert law enforcement about these illegal votes or registrations.
“At the instruction of Governor McAuliffe’s political appointees, local election officials spent countless resources to prevent this information from spilling into the open,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “Virginia hid critical information that would have improved election integrity while a political operative-turned-governor vetoed numerous proposals that would’ve prevented alien registration and voting. From NoVa to Norfolk and all urban and rural points in between, alien voters are casting ballots with practically no legal consequences in response.”
Our press release on the report is here.
Access to evidentiary exhibits referenced throughout can be found, here.
Report: Ineligible Aliens Registering to Vote and Casting Ballots
The Public Interest Legal Foundation published a report based on voting history records in Virginia showing that large numbers of ineligible aliens are registering to vote and casting ballots. They are canceling out the valid votes of American citizens. In some Virginia jurisdictions, the number of people registered to vote exceeds the number of citizens eligible to vote.
The full report is available here.
An excerpt is below:
“An investigation in Virginia by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and the Virginia Voter’s Alliance (VVA) shows that the cause of this problem is something much worse than simple ineffective governance. Worse still, Virginia state election officials are obstructing access to public records that reveal the extent to which non-citizens are participating in our elections. These obstructionist tactics have led to PILF and VVA obtaining data from only a handful of Virginia counties so far. But the information from a few counties demonstrates a massive problem.
In our small sample of just eight Virginia counties who responded to our public inspection requests, we found 1046 aliens who registered to vote illegally.
The problem is most certainly exponentially worse because we have no data regarding aliens on the registration rolls for the other 125 Virginia localities. Even in this small sample, when the voting history of this small sample of alien registrants is examined, nearly 200 verified ballots were cast before they were removed from the rolls. Each one of them is likely a felony.”
Our press release on our report is: here.
Scores of Counties Put on Notice About Corrupted Voter Rolls
141 Counties Have More Registered Voters Than People Alive
CLICK HERE TO HELP US CLEAN UP AMERICA’S VOTER ROLLS
(Alexandria, VA) – August 27. The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has put 141 counties on notice across the United States that they have more registered voters than people alive. PILF has sent 141 statutory notice letters to county election officials in 21 states. The letters are a prerequisite to bringing a lawsuit against those counties under Section 8 of the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
The letters inform the target counties that it appears they are violating the NVRA because they are not properly maintaining the voter rolls. The NVRA, (also known as Motor Voter) requires state and local election officials to properly maintain voter rolls and ensure that only eligible voters are registered to vote. Having more registrants than eligible citizens alive indicates that election officials have failed to properly maintain voter rolls.
States with counties which received a notice letter are (# of counties): Michigan (24), Kentucky (18), Illinois (17), Indiana (11), Alabama (10), Colorado (10), Texas (9), Nebraska (7), New Mexico (5), South Dakota (5), Kansas (4), Mississippi (4), Louisiana (3), West Virginia (3), Georgia (2), Iowa (2), Montana (2), North Carolina (2), Arizona, Missouri, New York (1 each). Federally produced data show the letter recipients have more registrants than living eligible citizens alive. (A sample letter can be found here.)
Lawyers for PILF have previously brought lawsuits against other counties that failed to clean up voter rolls after receiving a notice letter. The notice letters also seek access to public information about voter roll maintenance efforts. The United States Justice Department also can bring lawsuits to fix corrupted voter rolls but has failed to do so during the Obama administration.
“Corrupted voter rolls provide the perfect environment for voter fraud,” said J. Christian Adams, President and General Counsel of PILF. “Close elections tainted by voter fraud turned control of the United States Senate in 2009. Too much is at stake in 2016 to allow that to happen again.”
The Public Interest Legal Foundation will monitor responses by the 141 counties and remedial clean-up efforts. Federal law requires that a party sending a notice letter wait 90 days before filing a lawsuit. The entire list of counties who received the notice letter can be found here.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), (formerly Act Right Legal Foundation), is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. PILF 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. Media inquiries: media@publicinterestlegal.org. Click here for a copy of this release.