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DC Board of Elections Sued for Keeping Voter Data Secret

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


A conservative legal group sued the District of Columbia in federal court because they declined the inspection of voter fraud to see the maintenance records as required by law.

The District of Columbia Board of Elections said they couldn’t give the voter list maintenance docs because of the contract with the ERIC. It is a non-profit that describes its mission as “assisting states to improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”

The board justified their refusal to give the data with the ERIC contract.

The District of Columbia and 31 other states outsource the maintenance of its voter rolls to ERIC, which provides the district board with reports that show which registered voters aren’t eligible because they have died or relocated, the Epoch Times reported.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation brought the lawsuit, saying that ERIC has a history of inaccuracy in removing deceased and other registrants from voter lists.

“ERIC is being used to hide decisions about who gets to vote and who is removed from the rolls,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams, a former U.S. Justice Department civil rights attorney.

“Transparency in elections leads to trust in results and accountability for election officials. ERIC and its agreement with the District of Columbia are standing in the way of transparency and violating federal law,” he added.

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PILF describes itself as “the nation’s only public interest law firm dedicated wholly to election integrity,” saying that it exists “to assist states and others in aiding the cause of election integrity and fighting against lawlessness in American elections.”

In their legal complaint, PILF says that election officials can’t use the DC’s link with ERIC to escape the obligation under federal law to conduct election administration in a transparent matter.

According to the foundation, the complaint in 2016 “examined the voter registration policies and practices of the [Board of Elections] and the [Voter Registration Agencies] to determine whether they comply with relevant federal and District voter registration requirements and whether they reflect best practices in election administration nationwide.”

The auditor said that the board of elections “lacked effective policies and procedures as well as monitoring and enforcement to ensure the removal of deceased voter records, duplicate voter records, and correct voter records with inaccurate birth years from the District’s voter file, as required.”

PILF has been going after election fraud for many years.

Back in August, the group filed a research brief that alleges because of the coronavirus pandemic last year, various U.S. states “hastily pushed traditionally in-person voters to mail ballots while, at the same time, trying to learn how to even administer such a scenario.”

Almost 15 million mail-in ballots went unaccounted for in the 2020 presidential election, according to PILF.

Below are some of the findings from PILF:

–PILF says it had warned that lost ballots would be an even bigger problem in 2020 compared to previous years. In total, elections in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 saw more than 43.1 million unaccounted for mail-in ballots.

–Federal data compilations show that during the 2020 election, there were 14.7 million ballots whose whereabouts were deemed “unknown” by election officials, according to the brief.

–In the 2020 election, there were 14.7 million “unknown” ballots, along with 1.1 million undeliverable ballots, and 560,814 rejected ballots.

–PILF put these figures in perspective by noting that President Joe Biden carried Arizona by 10,457 votes, yet Maricopa County, the state’s largest county, reportedly sent ballots to 110,092 outdated or wrong addresses.

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–The scenario roughly repeated itself in Nevada, a state where Biden prevailed by 33,596 votes, even though Clark County “bounced” 93,279 ballots.

The report notes that many counties across the country had large numbers of “unknown” ballots.

–In California, Los Angeles County had 1,491,459 such ballots, followed by Orange County (482,940), Riverside County (454,911), San Diego County (317,614), San Bernardino County (274,937), Santa Clara County (251,840), and Sacramento County (241,367).

–Clark County, Nevada, had 724,708 such ballots. Essex County, New Jersey, had 248,290 unknown ballots, and Maricopa County had 229,123 ballots in the unknown category.

“The lesson is clear: increased reliance on mass mail voting must correlate with aggressive voter registration list maintenance,” the brief concludes.

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