The Washington Times - October 23, 2013, 09:42AM
A conservative group is warning Virginia’s fourth-largest municipality that it is violating state and federal law by refusing to maintain voter rolls that are free of ineligible voters.
Attorney J. Christian Adams sent a notice to Chesterfield County’s general registrar warning that the county is required to purge its voter rolls of dead voters, ineligible voters and those who have moved out of the state. If the county does not follow suit within 90 days, the group, called True the Vote, will go to court to force it to comply with the law, the notice said.
SEE RELATED: Group fighting voter fraud among those waiting on IRS; reams of documents still not enough
“It is our hope that your county will work quickly towards full compliance with [the law], rendering legal proceedings unnecessary,” Mr. Adams said in a letter to Lawrence Haake, the county’s general registrar.
The notice came after a federal judge ruled against a lawsuit filed by the Virginia Democratic Party against the State Board of Elections that called on the board to restore upward of 40,000 names to the state’s voter rolls that were removed through the anti-voting-fraud program, called Crosscheck.
In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton said DPV “failed to show a violation of the Equal Protection Clause or Due Process Clause” and “there exists a valid state interest in preventing voter fraud.”
True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said the group is trying to send a message to local election officials.
“When an administrator admits their refusal to follow state and federal laws — voter confidence and turnout are severely impacted,” she said in a statement. “Voter rolls must be held above politics.”
Mr. Adams targeted Chesterfield County in his letter because officials said in court documents that the State Board of Elections’ purging of their voter rolls was “suspect” and potentially included hundreds of lawfully registered voters.
“The declaration indicates that your office has suspended the removal of voters who no longer reside in Chesterfield County and have been found to have registered in other states through the interstate cross-check program,” Mr. Adams wrote. “If the circumstances described in the attached affidavit are not cured within the 90 day notice period, my clients may initiate action in federal court seeking an order to command you to comply with federal and state law.”
