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.
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