The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking it to review a case involving Pennsylvania’s refusal to release records showing how noncitizens were added to the Commonwealth’s voter rolls.
Pennsylvania publicly admitted that, for decades, its Department of Motor Vehicles had allowed non-U.S. citizens to register to vote through the state’s “motor voter” system. According to the state’s own analysis, “approximately 100,000 registered voters may potentially be non-citizens or may have been non-citizens at some point in time”
PILF requested the records under the National Voter Registration Act’s public disclosure provision, which requires states to make list maintenance documents available for public inspection. Pennsylvania denied the request, keeping key details about its internal review secret. “Significant questions remain unanswered about the list maintenance efforts to fix the problem,” the petition explains, including “who made the eligibility determinations” and “whether the Commonwealth scrutinized each registrant with cause or without cause”
However, when the case came in front of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the court ruled that PILF did not have the proper standing to request the documents from Pennsylvania. The Foundation argues that the Third Circuit wrongly applied TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, a case involving private credit reports, to a public records dispute.
PILF’s petition urges the Court to reaffirm that the denial of legally required public information is itself an injury under Public Citizen v. United States Department of Justice and FEC v. Akins.
“The appellate court’s decision allows the government to hide voter registration mistakes, malfeasance, and even discrimination,” the petition says. “If a voting rights organization like the Foundation does not have standing here, then virtually no one does, and the transparency Congress intended does not exist.”
“The public has a right to know how election officials handle errors that place ineligible names on the voter rolls,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams. “Transparency in voter list maintenance is not optional.”
PILF’s filing warns that unless the Court intervenes, states will be free to conceal how they handle problems that affect voter roll accuracy. “Congress made all list maintenance records subject to public inspection precisely so that the public can enjoy a transparent election process,” the petition concludes.
The case is Public Interest Legal Foundation, Inc. v. Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, et al., on petition for writ of certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Click here to read the petition.
For interviews or additional information, contact:
Douglas Blair | 503-956-9899 | dblair@publicinterestlegal.org