Tag Archives: Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF)

We Have Some Work To Do Before We Achieve Honest Elections

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On Thursday, The Federalist posted an article about the need to clean up voter rolls in some of our most populous states.

The article reports:

Registered New Jersey voters pick a new governor in the Nov. 4 general election, but before that the state really needs to clean up its voter list.

After reviewing New Jersey’s statewide voter roll, a report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) shows an “urgent need for improved list maintenance practices,” after identifying more than 32,000 registration issues, many of which could allow people to vote more than once.

PILF found 14,059 duplicate registrations, with voters registered in New Jersey and at least one other state at the same time. But PILF did not look at all 50 states, meaning there are certainly more to be found. PILF identified duplicate registrations in New Jersey and Florida (6,972 cases), New York (5,725), and Pennsylvania (925).

PILF also found 15,655 registrations using fictitious birth dates, which are sometimes used as placeholders — such as New Jersey’s most common placeholder date, 1800-01-01, that is, 225 years ago. The PILF report found 5,166 such birthdates in Essex County, 2,108 in Passaic County, and 1,928 in Middlesex County.

The article concludes:

PILF sent a July 16 letter with its findings and a request for a meeting to Tahesha Way, who is both New Jersey’s lieutenant governor and secretary of state.

“New Jersey’s same-address duplication problem has improved since the Foundation last reviewed the voter roll and is down from more than 8,200 in 2022,” the letter said. “It appears the bulk of these duplicates are driven by placeholder/fictious dates of birth confusing any process to de-duplicate the rolls. As of this letter, 65 percent of the apparent duplicates contain placeholder dates of birth. It stands to reason that if New Jersey addresses its placeholder data problem, it will substantially aid in the de-duplication process as well.”

Way’s office did not respond to an email from The Federalist seeking a comment on the letter and asking whether the state intends to clean its voter rolls in time for the gubernatorial election.  

I lived in Jersey City for a short time as a child. I remember people with clipboards walking through graveyards in the late summer and early fall. Election fraud has been going on for a very long time.

One Vote Makes A Difference

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On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the importance of one vote.

The article reports:

A new database created by the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows that one single vote has altered the outcome of hundreds of elections.

First, the fraud.

The Heritage Foundation has a unique Election  Fraud Database that provides a sampling of proven election crimes from across the country. So far, the Heritage database has found over 1,400 cases of proven election fraud , and new cases are constantly being added. You can search by state or type of election crime.

The documented cases include people voting for a deceased relative, voting in multiple states in the same election, casting fraudulent absentee ballots, and even foreign nationals casting ballots. There are many ways a person can engage in wrongdoing in connection with an election, hoping to affect its outcome. If you spend time perusing the data, it’s hard to argue credibly that fraud hasn’t had a role in American political history.

Remember, the Heritage database only includes cases that went to completed adjudication, such as a criminal conviction or finding of civil liability. It doesn’t document instances of fraud that were never reported by election officials to law enforcement or that were never pursued by prosecutors.

Part of the problem is that too many prosecutors don’t want to prosecute election fraud . There are numerous reasons why.

We saw this when we both worked in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice . With few exceptions, the attorneys we worked with were openly hostile toward prosecuting election fraud. Even raising the issue of election crimes was considered controversial and evidence of “discriminatory” conduct, because they falsely claimed any such prosecution is “voter suppression.” After all, The New York Times tells its loyal readers in the civil service that election fraud is a myth. Biased advocacy organizations that our colleagues admired, such as the Brennan Center, also told them that voter fraud  is a myth .

The article concludes:

The Public Interest Legal Foundation ’s Tied Election Database catalogs 589 elections that have ended in ties in the U.S. The vast majority of these elections were within the last 20 years, although this is by no means a complete or comprehensive list. This database just scratches the surface.

These tied elections illustrate that one vote, legal or illegal, can determine the winner of a race.

No one wants an illegal vote to stop the true will of the people from being heard on Election Day. We should all care whenever an election crime happens. It dilutes every single legal vote. And sometimes it can determine the winner of an election.

One illegal vote cast is too many. States must get serious about prosecuting election crimes. Otherwise, there is no deterrence to stop people from committing them.

This is a solvable problem. All we need is elected officials with the will to solve it.

Election Fraud Is Real

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On January 8th, The Epoch Times posted the following headline:

Colorado Secretary of State’s Office Admits It Mailed Over 31,000 Voter Registration Instruction Cards to Noncitizens

What could possibly go wrong?

The article reports:

In October 2022, the Colorado Secretary of State’s office acknowledged that it mailed more than 31,000 voter registration instruction cards to foreign nationals living in the state.

The registration information was sent out in the months leading up to the 2022 midterm elections.

In a Jan. 5, 2023, press release, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) stated, “The Secretary of State’s office blamed a ‘data analytical error’ for the noncitizens in 58 counties receiving voter registration materials.”

PILF, a national election integrity watchdog group, is investigating who was responsible for the mailing and how state election roll maintenance is conducted in Colorado.

Colorado’s contractual relationship with the Election Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonprofit organization offering voter roll maintenance services to 32 states, needs to be examined, according to investigators (pdf).

In the press release, PILF alleged that “ERIC played a significant role in this error.”

This is where things stand now:

On Aug. 20, 2021, PILF formally notified Griswold (Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold) that she was in violation of federal law for failure to permit public inspection of Colorado’s state voter list, as required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

The NVRA, also known as the “Motor Voter Act,” took effect in January 1995. It requires all states to allow qualified persons to register to vote when renewing their driver’s licenses or applying for social services.

PILF gave Griswold 90 days to “cure the violation” or face a lawsuit.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office denied PILF’s request again in late November 2021.

A lawsuit was filed by PILF against Griswold on Dec. 16, 2021, in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.

The case is still pending.

The 14-page complaint contends that the requested records fall within the scope of the NVRA’s public disclosure provision.

The NVRA also requires state election authorities to preserve all voter list maintenance records for a minimum of two years.

The complaint provides documentation that Griswold admitted to retaining copies of the deceased voter list she receives from ERIC for “just a few months.”

The plaintiff has asked the court to declare Griswold is in violation of the NVRA, order her to provide PILF with the requested records, and enjoin her from denying similar requests in the future.

PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a statement, “The public should be able to see all of the records so we can hold election officials accountable.”

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office and ERIC didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.

We really can’t change the fraud that happened in 2020, but we have a responsibility to make sure it never happens again.

Limiting Voting To Legal Voters

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The idea of only American citizens being allowed to vote in American elections is pretty basic. You wouldn’t think there would be a lot of room for discussion (or lawsuits). You would be wrong.

Yesterday Breitbart reported that the Fourth Circuit federal appeals court has ruled against the North Carolina State Board of Elections, vacating a lower court’s decision blocking the inspection of the state’s voter rolls for non-citizen registrations and voting.

The article reports:

“North Carolina had tried to prevent the public from inspecting records related to noncitizens registering and voting in our elections,” PILF (Public Interest Legal Foundation) President J. Christian Adams said in a statement.

“Federal law presumes that election records are public,” Adams said. “The Fourth Circuit vacated the lower court’s dismissal of the case. This is an important win because it means that the public’s right to know about election vulnerabilities has been vindicated.”

The Richmond-based appeals court concluded “that the Board’s efforts in the present case to identify non-citizen registrants qualify as a ‘program’ or ‘activity’ to ensure an accurate list of eligible voters.”

In June 2019, PILF filed the lawsuit against North Carolina election officials after they failed to disclose voter roll records showing non-citizen registrations and voting. A lower court, though, dismissed PILF’s lawsuit claiming such records could not be disclosed to the public.

The article concludes:

While PILF will now go back to court to negotiate over the records, this is the third win for PILF on protecting the right to inspect state voter rolls for non-citizen registrations and voting since 2019.

In March 2019, a Texas court ruled that PILF could move forward with seeking non-citizen voting records in Harris County, Texas. Then, in December 2019, a federal court similarly ruled that PILF could continue seeking non-citizen voting records in Pennsylvania.

North Carolina has a history of concealing non-citizen voting. In November 2019, for instance, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) vetoed legislation that would have purged self-admitted non-citizen voters from the state’s voter rolls ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

The case is Public Interest Legal Foundation v. North Carolina State Board of Elections, 19-2265 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Every American should support the idea of only legal voters voting. Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter.

Preventing Dead People From Voting

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It should be the goal of every American to have every legal voter be allowed to vote and every legal vote counted. However, it doesn’t always work that way, and unfortunately there are people who work to keep it from working that way.

The Epoch Times is reporting today that the Public Interest Legal Foundation has won its lawsuit in Pennsylvania, and because of their victory more than 20,000 deceased voters will be removed from the voter rolls in the state.

The article reports:

The lawsuit (pdf) was filed in November and alleged that some 21,000 dead people were still on the state’s voter rolls during the 2020 presidential election. Pennsylvania agreed to compare its voter-registration database with the Social Security Death Index before removing the names from the rolls.

“This marks an important victory for the integrity of elections in Pennsylvania,” Public Interest Legal Foundation President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said in a statement in announcing the court’s decision. “The Commonwealth’s failure to remove deceased registrants created a vast opportunity for voter fraud and abuse. It is important to not have dead voters active on the rolls for 5, 10, or even 20 years. This settlement fixes that.”

The lawsuit was filed after the Nov. 3 election and when then-candidate Joe Biden took a lead over President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Ultimately, the Pennsylvania Secretary of Commonwealth’s office certified the election.

The foundation said it found that 9,212 of the 21,000 voters had been dead for more than five years, and nearly 2,000 voters had been dead for more than 10 years.

We can’t change the results of the last election, but we can close some of the loopholes that allowed cheating so that we can lessen fraud in the next election.

About That Mail-In Vote

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The Epoch Times reported yesterday that according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), nearly 350,000 dead registrants remain on voter rolls across 41 states.

The article reports:

The number is a major improvement over the last time an assessment of similar scope was performed in 2012, when a Pew Research report turned up 2 million deceased voters on the rolls.

In the 2016 and 2018 elections, states credited 14,608 registrants for voting after death, the PILF report found. The foundation didn’t count cases where votes could have been cast by living registrants during the early or absentee voting periods.

North Carolina led the United States in both 2016 and 2018 in the number of votes credited to deceased registrants. The second-worst states in both elections registered three times fewer votes cast by dead registrants.

The article concludes:

The Trump administration embarked on a similar audit in 2018 with the formation of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission was forced to disband after facing coordinated resistance from state officials who stonewalled requests for voter roll data. Adams, who was part of the commission, in 2019 picked up where the commission left off.

Three states sued to prevent their data from being released: Illinois, Maine, and Maryland.

The most populous states tend to have the most deceased registrants on voter rolls, the report found. New York, Texas, Michigan, Florida, and California accounted for 51 percent of all of the deceased registrants nationwide.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the potential for fraud in a mass mail-in vote election. He has instructed voters in North Carolina to vote by mail and then attend a polling place on Election Day to check if their mail-in ballot had been counted and, if it was not, to cast a vote in person. The PILF report found that 22 percent of the double vote credits in Arizona’s 2016 election were due to mail-in and subsequent in-person vote combinations.

The thing to remember when discussing voter fraud is that many of the people currently in office have been helped by voter fraud and do not want to give up power. The status quo that has allowed illegal voting works for many of those in office. They are reluctant to change it.