Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘PUBLIC INTEREST LEGAL FOUNDATION’

Democrat Fixer Marc Elias’ Firm Steps In To Stop ‘Disastrous Election System’ Fix


BY: M.D. KITTLE | JUNE 19, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/06/19/democrat-fixer-marc-elias-firm-steps-in-to-stop-disastrous-election-system-fix/

Democrat attorney Marc Elias appearing on MSNBC.

Author M.D. Kittle profile

M.D. KITTLE

MORE ARTICLES

Bogus Russian dossier peddler and Democrat Party problem fixer Marc Elias has again injected himself into a key election integrity case to “defend the broken status quo.” Swing-state Nevada’s dirty voter rolls include hundreds of suspect addresses, at bars, strip clubs, empty parking lots, and other commercial addresses, according to an investigation by the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Doing so is clearly against the law. 

“In Nevada, by the state law, you are required to be registered where you actually live, where you sleep. Not where you work, not at a P.O. Box. So we’re trying to get elections officials to enforce the law,” Lauren Bis, PILF’s director of communication and engagement, says in a video tracking bad addresses in the Las Vegas area. 

To that end, the foundation has filed a petition in Washoe County, Nevada’s second-most populous county, to force elections officials to investigate and fix commercial addresses on the voter roll. PILF investigators found addresses on the rolls reported as liquor stores, empty lots, and even the Nevada Gaming Control Board, among others. 

Baseless Attacks?

Elias Law Group and a band of leftists have sought to intervene in PILF’s petition for a writ of mandamus, arguing that forcing Washoe election administrators to follow the law and clean up the county’s dirty voter rolls will “threaten” voting rights. 

The would-be intervenors claim that their members and constituents would be forced to “expend substantial resources to educate voters and protect them from baseless attacks on their eligibility.” 

Baseless attacks? 

As The Federalist recently reported, Bis was greeted with a lot of quizzical looks from employees at the casinos, fast-food restaurants, retailers, post offices, funeral homes, strip clubs, tattoo parlors, and jails where registered voters — at least according to Nevada’s dirty voter rolls — “resided.” What PILF found was equal parts sad and hilarious, foundation President J. Christian Adams told me on “The Federalist Radio Hour.”

The election integrity public interest law firm tracked data from the Nevada secretary of state’s office, which in the 2022 midterm elections reported 95,556 ballots sent to undeliverable, or “bad,” addresses. PILF investigators documented commercial addresses purported to be the residences of registered voters, confirming on video that the individuals did not live where they reported residing. 

“We’ve been to all of the locations. It’s not some data exercise we see sitting at a computer in Chicago. We’ve actually got boots on the ground looking for the voters, and they don’t exist,” Adams said.

‘Disastrous Elections System’

Making matters worse, Nevada automatically mails a ballot to every active registrant on the voter rolls. 

“I’m looking for Ronald or William Phelps,” Bis says in the video to a bartender wearing a “Tacos por favor” T-shirt at a local watering hole on North Nellis Boulevard in Vegas. “I don’t know who that is,” the barkeep replies. 

“So, they don’t live here?” Bis asks. “Uh, at the bar? No,” the bartender says, chuckling. She’s clearly amused by the question. 

It’s almost as amusing as Elias and friends’ apparent efforts to stop election officials from following the law under the absurd premise of voter rights. Their court filing offers a dire warning about what will happen if Washoe County is required to do what PILF has done: Washoe County’s job. 

“If the Court grants such relief, Respondent Burgess — and other clerks and registrars across the state — will be flooded with third-party demands to investigate all manner of alleged peculiarities in the voter rolls, based on unsourced, unverified, and unsworn information,” the court filing admonishes. “Petitioners are not the only ones making such demands. Nevada is in the midst of a storm of baseless efforts by third parties to force election officials to undertake a rushed purge of registered voters before the November election.”

Adams called Elias’ latest lawfare stunt a “cry wolf exercise.” 

“He does this all over the country. He spools up these progressive astroturf organizations and they file a legal brief, which they have done in our case, which we have to respond to, that says, ‘Oh, if you listen to these evil conservatives, there will be eligible people improperly removed from the rolls.’ Nonsense,” said Adams, who formerly served in the Voting Section at the U.S. Department of Justice and was appointed to President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. 

“Marc Elias is in the business of defending the riches of a disastrous elections system with universal vote-by-mail that are sending ballots automatically to thousands of bogus addresses,” Adams added.  


Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

Report: 186 Now-Removed Arizona Voter Roll Names Were Foreign Nationals


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/22/report-186-now-removed-arizona-voter-roll-names-were-foreign-nationals/

Arizona state flags.

Arizona removed nearly 200 residents from its voter rolls after discovering they were foreign nationals, and therefore ineligible to vote, a new report revealed.

Published on Tuesday, the analysis by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found that 186 noncitizens residing in Pima County have been “involuntarily purged” from the Grand Canyon State’s voter registration lists since 2021. According to the report, seven of these 186 foreigners appear to have cast ballots “across two federal and local elections.”

Records reviewed by PILF included more detailed information, such as the party affiliation of the aforementioned noncitizens. The analysis indicated 108 did not have a party affiliation, while 46 were registered as Democrats and 28 as Republicans. Three were registered independents and one was a Libertarian.

“Roughly 65 percent of records came from ‘political parties and group drives,’” the report reads. “Although conclusions in other studies established that organizers of voter registration drives can be left leaning, the party affiliations of the registrants within the Pima disclosure are more varied.”

separate report released by PILF last year found that Arizona had also removed 222 Maricopa County residents who were identified as foreign nationals since 2015. Of those 222 noncitizens, nine purportedly cast “12 ballots across 4 federal elections.”

PILF’s analysis comes amid concerns over whether Arizona’s voter registration processes could lead to registering foreign nationals to vote. While Arizona requires residents to show proof of citizenship to vote in state elections, a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision forbade the state from implementing such a requirement for federal elections. As PILF noted, individuals who cannot provide Arizona with documents to prove citizenship “may participate only in federal elections” using a federal-only ballot.

“State officials also query government databases to backfill these credentials for existing registrants where they can,” the report says. “If officials become aware of a registrant’s documented foreign nationality from reliable government data, however, they are ‘involuntarily purged’ from the roll if they cannot prove subsequent naturalization has occurred.”

These registration procedures highlight the problems with policies such as automatic voter registration and permitting illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses, which, PILF noted, “exacerbate the problem” of foreign nationals being registered to vote in U.S. elections.

[RELATED: Ballots Cast Without Proof Of Citizenship ‘Exploded’ After Lawfare Crippled Arizona Election Laws]

In a statement, PILF President J. Christian Adams blasted federal law for “hamper[ing] states’ abilities to validate citizenship during the voter registration process” and called on lawmakers to change it so states can verify registrants’ citizenship.

“Arizona is limited to building imperfect systems to address the problem of foreign nationals voting,” Adams said.


Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

Author Shawn Fleetwood profile

SHAWN FLEETWOOD

VISIT ON TWITTER@SHAWNFLEETWOOD

MORE ARTICLES

Lawsuit Forces Los Angeles County To Remove 1.2 Million Ineligible Voters From Rolls


BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/27/lawsuit-forces-los-angeles-county-to-remove-1-2-million-ineligible-voters-from-rolls/

voter sticker

Los Angeles County, California confirmed it had removed 1.2 million ineligible voters from its rolls thanks to a settlement with the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, the group announced Friday. Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in 2017 on behalf of itself and four registered voters in Los Angeles County. Election Integrity Project California, Inc., another public interest group, was also a part of the lawsuit.

Under the agreement, Los Angeles had to send 1.6 million address confirmation notices to voters listed “inactive” on its voter rolls. According to the National Voter Registration Act — which requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls — states and counties must remove from their voting rolls voters who do not respond to such mailers and do not vote in the next two federal elections.

In its most recent progress report for complying with the settlement, Los Angeles told Judicial Watch it had removed a total of 1.2 million ineligible voters from its rolls. Last year, the county revealed that 634,000 of its inactive voters hadn’t voted in the past 10 years.

Back in 2017 when Judicial Watch first filed its lawsuit, it argued Los Angeles County had more registered voters than residents eligible to register and the “highest number of inactive registrations of any single county in the country.” According to data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission at that time, voter registration for the county was 112 percent of its adult citizen population.

“This long overdue voter roll clean-up of 1.2 million registrations in Los Angeles County is a historic victory and means California elections are less at risk for fraud,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement. “Building on this success, Judicial Watch will continue its lawsuits and activism to clean up voter rolls and to promote and protect cleaner elections.”

This isn’t the first lawsuit of its kind by Judicial Watch. New York City recently removed 441,083 ineligible voters from its voter rolls after reaching a settlement with the conservative advocacy group. North Carolina also removed more than 430,000 ineligible registrants from its rolls due to a similar lawsuit, and Kentucky agreed to do the same in response to a lawsuit.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation is another good government group that has filed lawsuits to compel states including Michigan and Pennsylvania to clean their voter rolls to guard against potential election fraud.


Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.

Author Victoria Marshall profile

VICTORIA MARSHALL

VISIT ON TWITTER@VEMRSHLL

MORE ARTICLES

Tag Cloud