The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit Friday against Maryland election officials, alleging the state has failed to properly maintain its voter-registration rolls. According to the complaint, registration rates in several Maryland counties are “impossibly high,” with two of the state’s largest counties reporting more registered voters than adult citizens.
The lawsuit also states that 10 additional counties have registration rates above 95% of their adult-citizen populations, even though 2022 U.S. Census Bureau data places Maryland’s overall registration rate at roughly 75.6%, the Daily Caller reported on Friday.
“Marylanders deserve to have confidence in their elections and to know that their state is properly maintaining its voter rolls,” RNC Chair Joe Gruters said. “The State Board of Elections has failed to do its job and remove ineligible or deceased voters from its rolls. Marylanders have a right to accurate voter rolls, which is why the RNC is suing today.”
Election officials are allegedly failing to make reasonable efforts to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and properly tend to voter registration rolls, according to the lawsuit cited by the outlet.
The Office of Legislative Audits of the Maryland General Assembly found in October 2023 that the State Board of Elections’ review of its voter registration data “remained inadequate.” An audit discovered “2,426 potentially deceased individuals with active voter registration and 327 individuals with potential duplicate voter registrations,” according to the report.
Failure to maintain voter lists “burdens the right to vote of the individual Plaintiffs and all individual members of the RNC and MDGOP who are lawfully registered to vote in Maryland by undermining their confidence in the integrity of the electoral process, discouraging their participation in the democratic process, and instilling in them the fear that their legitimate votes will be nullified or diluted by unlawful votes,” the lawsuit states.
In addition, the U.S. Departmen of Justice has also filed a lawsuit against Maryland for failing to produce requested voter registration lists, the outlet reported.
The Maryland suit is part of the DOJ’s move requiring more than half of U.S. states to update and maintain their voter rolls, and a senior department official told Just the News this week that prosecutors believe the lapses that left deceased individuals and non-citizens listed as eligible voters in several Democrat-run states may have been intentional.
“The sloppiness of the elections in blue states is no accident. It is on purpose. It is a feature, not a bug,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet J. Dhillon told Just the News’ streaming news program.
“And the goal is to cram as many people on there and make voters who are not particularly engaged, make it easy for someone else to help them fill out their ballot and return it for them when they didn’t care enough to do it themselves,” she added.
“What we can do at the federal government level is ensure that our federal election laws are observed, and that includes each state’s requirement to keep clean voter rolls,” she added. “That is a fundamental basic.”
Dhillon spoke one day after her division filed lawsuits against six Democrat-led states — Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Washington state and Vermont — seeking court orders requiring them to provide voter-registration records to the Justice Department. The filings state that the DOJ intends to examine the rolls for irregularities, outdated or duplicate entries, and other potential violations of federal list-maintenance requirements, the outlet reported.
She also reached an agreement last week with North Carolina requiring the state to review and correct more than 100,000 voter registrations that were added without meeting state legal requirements.
Dhillon said her office is now on track — through litigation, settlements or voluntary compliance — to require at least 26 states to update and clean their voter rolls.
“We’re now in litigation with 14 states. So the six yesterday included Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Washington State and Vermont. That adds to eight we already had going,” she said.
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