It took a lawsuit to do it, but election officials in Todd County, Minnesota, have reached a settlement with the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) for officials to implement a new system to ensure that duplicate voters are identified and removed from current and future voter rolls.
Todd County agreed to remove 22 duplicate voter registrations currently on the rolls.
James Dickey of the Upper Midwest Law Center served as the local counsel for the plaintiff.
The suit was brought in September by PILF under the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA requires states to create and maintain an accurate, computerized, statewide voter registration list.
The watchdog groups’ legal victory is the first time a state exempted from the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter Law) has been successfully sued to force a clean-up of voter rolls.
Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are the only six states that are statutorily exempt.
“We should not have to sue election officials to get them to do their jobs, but that is what PILF is having to do," PILF spokesperson Lauren Bowman Bis told The Epoch Times.
“We will continue to sue election officials who are not following federal law and doing basic voter list maintenance.”
Bis acknowledged that it often takes technical and legal effort to make even the smallest improvements in election integrity.
“These voter list maintenance lawsuits take time and require accurate data,” she said.
PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a Nov. 14 statement: “We are excited that this case was able to bring about a better process for ensuring that Todd County’s voter rolls do not contain duplicates.
“This innovative legal strategy to force voter roll maintenance should be used in the other five states that are exempted from the NVRA.”
Last week, PILF was able to drop its case against Olmsted County, Minnesota, because local officials removed all the duplicate registrants on its rolls and put a system in place to eliminate future duplications.
The Minnesota counties of Dakota, Hennepin, Nicollet, and Ramsey still have active HAVA complaints against them.
PILF is a public interest law firm dedicated entirely to election integrity.
The foundation has brought and won notable lawsuits in Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
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