The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has uncovered widespread inaccuracies in California’s voter registration rolls, including nearly 95,000 deceased registrants, tens of thousands of duplicates across state lines, and thousands of records with placeholder or fictitious birthdates.
PILF’s comprehensive review, based on a sample of 2 million active registrants, found:
- 94,516 deceased registrants flagged from comparisons with the Social Security Death Index and obituary records.
- 57,725 interstate duplicates where California registrants also appeared on voter rolls in other states, led by Washington (15,064), Florida (13,534), and Oregon (8,956).
- 3,104 same-address duplicates.
- 7,677 registrants with placeholder or fictitious birthdates, including records like “1/1/1900” or “1850-01-01,” complicating voter roll maintenance.
- 8 percent of sampled birthdates contained errors when checked against Social Security and credit bureau records, signaling systemic problems with data integrity.
“These are failures that put election security at risk,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams. “California’s voter roll is riddled with errors. State officials must act to fix these problems before another election cycle passes.”
Logan Churchwell, PILF’s Research Director, added: “California is not alone. Our reviews across the country have shown that voter roll maintenance is falling behind everywhere. But California’s scale of errors is staggering.”
PILF has conducted similar reviews in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maine, and New York, uncovering thousands of questionable records in each state.
The organization is calling for greater transparency, cooperation with federal resources, and modernized tools to restore the integrity of California’s voter registration system.
The letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber can be found here.
For more PILF research and past findings, visit:
For more information or to schedule an interview with J. Christian Adams or Logan Churchwell, please contact Douglas Blair at dblair@publicinterestlegal.org or call 503-956-9899