After losing 15 straight court battles in its effort to gain access to state voter rolls across the country, the Trump administration is making another push to reshape the nation’s voter rolls—this time by joining forces with a right-wing legal group seeking to remove hundreds of thousands of names from California’s voter registration database.
According to Democracy Docket, the Justice Department has asked a federal court for permission to help in a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, the right-wing organization that has spent years trying to force states to conduct aggressive voter roll purges.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton celebrated the move on social media, declaring that the DOJ was stepping in to help “clean nearly 1 million dirty voter names from California’s voter rolls.”
The lawsuit alleges that California has failed to make a “reasonable effort” to remove voters who have moved out of state, as required by the National Voter Registration Act.
Judicial Watch claims there are roughly 873,000 inactive voter registrations that should be removed. The organization has filed similar lawsuits in several other states, including Oregon, Colorado, Kentucky, and New York.
The Justice Department’s filing goes even further.
In addition to backing Judicial Watch’s claims under the National Voter Registration Act, the DOJ added its own allegation that California is violating the Help America Vote Act by failing to properly maintain a statewide voter registration list.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon argued in the filing that California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has failed to meet federal requirements for maintaining accurate voter registration records.
The DOJ has given California until Aug. 5 to begin what it describes as “systematic voter removal.”
Dhillon also defended the effort on social media, saying she is “fighting daily to improve quality and confidence in our elections.”
The legal battle comes as President Donald Trump continues his broader campaign to gain access to state voter rolls nationwide.
That effort has hit repeated roadblocks in court.
So far, Trump’s Justice Department has lost 15 separate legal challenges seeking access to state voter registration data, with judges repeatedly rejecting the administration’s arguments.
Now, rather than suing California on its own, the DOJ is attempting to join an existing lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, giving the administration another avenue to pursue changes to the state’s voter rolls.
Supporters of voter roll maintenance argue that states have a legal obligation to keep registration records accurate by removing people who have moved or died.
Voting rights advocates, however, have long warned that overly aggressive voter roll purges can mistakenly remove eligible voters, creating barriers for citizens who are legally entitled to cast a ballot.
A federal judge is scheduled to hold a hearing on Aug. 10 to determine whether the Justice Department can officially join the case.
The outcome could become another major test of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to expand the federal government’s role in state election administration.
