DOJ: Masses of noncitizens, dead people on voters rolls

(The Daily Signal) — The Justice Department is finding thousands of noncitizens and dead people on voter rolls as it pursues more state election records, said Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, in an interview.

“We’re finding tens of thousands of noncitizens on the voter rolls, hundreds of thousands of dead people on the voter rolls, and duplicate registrations between states,” Dhillon said on “Just the News, No Noise.”

Dhillon based her claim on a review of only 16 Republican-leaning states, such as Florida and Texas, that voluntarily complied with the Justice Department’s request for the election records.

The administration is suing 29 states for the records, seeking to ensure that states are complying with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Those laws require states to update their voter registration lists and ensure they are free of names of dead people, or people who no longer reside in jurisdictions where they are registered to vote.

This comes in light of several prosecutions of noncitizens for illegal voting.

This week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI announced the arrest of Mahady Sacko, an illegal alien from Mauritania, for voter fraud in Philadelphia. ICE asserted he had been illegally voting in the United States since 2008.

Sacko entered the U.S. near Miami, and an immigration judge ordered him removed. Sacko exhausted all appeals, and the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld his removal on Nov. 14, 2002—over two decades ago.

In December, Joe Ceballos resigned as mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, after being arrested for voting multiple times, though he was not a citizen. The Department of Homeland Security announced removal proceedings but Ceballos, a legal permanent resident from Mexico, voted in multiple elections, according to the agency, and faced state charges.

The lawsuits contend the Justice Department has the authority to request and review election records under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

The DOJ has sued both red and blue states. Most recently, the Justice Department sued Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the Democrat-leaning New Jersey.

The Justice Department has also sued major Democrat-leaning states, such as California and New York, for voter rolls, as well as battleground states such as Arizona and Georgia.

“It’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job,” Dhillon said.

The Justice Department could have a tough road ahead, noted J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group that has sued states for information on “dirty voter rolls.”

Adams is a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“It’s decades-old news,” Adams told The Daily Signal of dead voters and noncitizens on voter lists. “Good luck doing anything about it.”

He noted that in cases by the foundation, both the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled states can’t be compelled to clean up voter rolls if they are already making an effort. The Supreme Court declined to hear the cases.

“It’s one thing to get data, it’s another thing to enforce cleaning up the rolls,” Adams said.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to The Daily Signal by publication time to provide more details about the number of ineligible voters found on the voter lists so far.

This article was originally published by The Daily Signal.

Fred Lucas | The Daily Signal

Fred Lucas is chief national affairs correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Abuse of Power: Inside The Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump.”