California Secretary of State Shirley Weber
ORANGE COUNTY — California's state and local election authorities have not done enough to clean and maintain the state's list of eligible voters for years, allowing more than 870,000 voter registrations to remain on the voter rolls and potentially to receive ballots, even though the voters may have moved out of state or died, a new lawsuit alleges.
In late May, conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiffs Don Wagner, who is a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and the Republican candidate for Secretary of State, challenging Weber, who is a Democrat; and the American Independent Party of California, an alternative political party in the state.
The lawsuit is similar to others Judicial Watch has filed in other states, accusing the Democratic officials responsible for overseeing elections in those states of failing to abide by federal law and rules governing the removal of inactive voters from voter rolls.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs assert that Weber has fallen short of her duties under the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to ensure California counties are following the steps dictated by the law to ensure that voters who have either died or have relocated outside of California are properly purged from lists of voters eligible to receive ballots, including mail-in ballots.
California does not require voters present identification when voting either in person or when receiving a ballot by mail.
California counties send mail-in ballots to all registered voters.
According to the lawsuit, for instance, 20 California counties removed no more than 50 voter registrations each from their voter rolls from 2022 to 2024.
And 21 counties removed zero voter registrations from their lists of eligible voters from 2024-2025, the lawsuit asserted.
Yet, all told, those counties accounted for millions of eligible voters.
The lawsuit asserts the removal rate is not mathematically possible, if California and its counties were living up to their obligations under the NVRA.
They noted, for instance, that San Diego County, home to more than 2.2 million registered voters, alone removed more than 300,000 voter registrations from its voter rolls during that same time period.
They noted the U.S. Census Bureau estimates more than 660,000 California residents moved out of state during that time.
And they said Census data indicates at least 18 California counties now have more voter registrations than they do U.S. citizens over the age of 18.
They noted California's voter rolls are so inaccurate that a "cottage industry" has sprung up in the state to assist candidates with cleaning their own lists of eligible voters to ensure their money is not being wasted on campaign mailings and advertising aimed at dead or relocated voters.
In sum, the plaintiffs assert that data indicates 873,092 California voter registrations have "been continuously inactive for at least two general federal elections" and 326,808 had been inactive for at least three election years.
Plaintiffs conceded Weber has claimed that her office has delegated all responsibility for abiding by the NVRA voter list maintenance mandates to county officials. But they said Weber has also done nothing to remind them of their responsibilities or otherwise ensure the counties are living up to their duties under the law.
If California “was actually conducting a general program that makes a reasonable effort to cancel the registrations of voters who have become ineligible because of a change of residence, it would not be possible” for these counties to cancel so few registrations under the NVRA in a two-year period, the lawsuit asserts.
“Judicial Watch’s federal lawsuit confirms California has a dirty voting rolls crisis – with thousands of old names on the rolls going back at least 10 years,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. And California and its counties must take immediate steps to clean the over 870,000 dirty names on the voting lists.”
California has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court.
