The Justice Department’s hamfisted effort to seize control of state voter rolls got slapped down hard this week. Twice.
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division demanded extensive voter data and sued 23 states, along with the District of Columbia, for refusing to hand it over. The government’s theory is that allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots disenfranchises eligible voters by diluting the value of their ballots. And the only solution to this nonexistent problem is for states to hand over their complete voter rolls, let the federal government scrutinize the data, and tell them which voters to delete. Citing state privacy laws, most states agreed to provide redacted lists only, withholding drivers license and social security numbers. But this was insufficient for the DOJ, which plans to build a nationwide database maintained by the federal government.
The lawsuits cite the National Voter Registration Act, which orders states to make “a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters” and “make available for public inspection … all records concerning the implementation of programs conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.” The feds read this as requiring disclosure of “the current electronic copy of California’s computerized statewide voter registration list,” including “all fields contained within the list.”
Secondarily, the feds rely on the Civil Rights Act of 1960 — not 1964 — in which Congress ordered registrars to keep “all records and papers which come into [their] possession relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting” and make them available for “inspection, reproduction, and copying” by the Attorney General upon presentation of a demand stating the basis for the request.
Using a law specifically designed to stop states from disenfranchising Black citizens to carry out a nationwide voter purge might make some lawyers a bit queasy. But not Harmeet Dhillon! The president’s former personal attorney is currently suing multiple states for “violating” Title IX by letting trans girls play sports. Dhillon actually told the Wall Street Journal that she “begins her workday scrolling through X, searching for claims of discrimination,” after which “I text my deputies, and we assign cases, and we get cranking.”
This woman will not be shamed!
The first court to rule was the District of Oregon, where Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said on the bench Wednesday that he will almost certainly dismiss the DOJ’s claim for exceeding the language of the NVRA and CRA. PBS reports that the DOJ cited Oregon’s high percentage of registered voters as a potential sign of failure to remove ineligible voters. But the court demurred: “I’m very cautious and doubtful that what you’re asking for, which is an unredacted list, is actually going to give you the information that you need to establish a violation.”
Judge Kasubhai has yet to issue a written ruling, but Judge David Carter of the Central District of California beat him to the punch. The 81-year-old jurist got a Bronze Star in Vietnam, became a state court judge in 1981, joined the federal bench in 1998, and is out of fucks to give. Warning that “democracy can be lost in a generation,” he lambasted the executive branch for seizing power over local elections which the Constitution specifically vests in Congress and the states.
“There cannot be unbridled consolidation of all elections power in the Executive without action from Congress and public debate,” he wrote. “This is antithetical to the promise of fair and free elections our country promises and the franchise that civil rights leaders fought and died for.”
“The taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left,” he concluded ominously. “The case before the Court is one of these cuts that imperils all Americans.”
Judge Carter dismissed the case in its entirety, and two hours later the DOJ noticed its appeal. Sure, the Civil Rights Division is bleeding lawyers and hundreds of staff have been taken offline to review the Epstein Files. But when it comes to chipping away at democracy, they’ll make the time.
Liz Dye produces the Law and Chaos Substack and podcast. You can subscribe by clicking the logo:
The post Courts Dropkick DOJ’s Disenfranchisement Database appeared first on Above the Law.