RNC Files New Anti-Voting Lawsuits In Michigan and North Carolina
The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed two new anti-voting lawsuits this week in Michigan and North Carolina.
On Thursday, the RNC sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections, alleging that the board has failed to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
Under state law, noncitizens aren’t allowed to vote in elections nor serve on juries. A new law requires all North Carolina county clerks to note when a person summoned for jury duty requests to be excused because they aren’t a U.S. citizen and send that person’s information to the state board of elections. The law then requires the board to remove them from the voter rolls if they are registered to vote.
The RNC’s lawsuit alleges that the state board hasn’t followed the new law’s requirement to remove noncitizens recorded by county clerks from the state’s voter rolls. The lawsuit also claims that the board rejected the RNC’s request to see copies of the state’s voter rolls and other voter roll maintenance records, which violates the North Carolina Public Records Act.
The RNC is asking a North Carolina court to remove any noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls and for the board to give them copies of the state’s voter registration records.
This lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal efforts challenging state and county voter roll maintenance in an attempt to have millions of registered voters removed from voter rolls across the country. According to Democracy Docket’s litigation tracker, there’s at least 21 active anti-voting lawsuits in 16 states that, in some capacity, are trying to purge voter rolls.
A recent Democracy Docket investigation identified at least eight right-wing groups — including larger ones like the Election Integrity Network and True the Vote, to smaller grassroots ones like Wisconsin’s North of 29 — who are organizing to have millions of registered voters removed from their state’s voter rolls. These efforts come in the form of lawsuits, like two filed by the right-wing United Sovereign Americans in Florida and Ohio earlier this month and door-to-door canvassing efforts like what the Pigpen Project is doing in Nevada.
The RNC’s lawsuit is also part of a larger right-wing effort to spread disinformation about noncitizens voting in federal elections. Earlier this year, Congressional Republicans introduced a nationwide bill to ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections — a practice that’s been outlawed since the mid-90s. Since then, GOP lawmakers across the country have been pushing a false narrative that noncitizens are voting en masse in federal elections — and it could impact the upcoming presidential election.
On Friday, the RNC filed another lawsuit in Michigan, accusing the Election Commission of Detroit of violating state law by hiring more Democratic poll workers than Republican ones for the upcoming election.
According to state law, it’s up to election commissioners to, as best it can, appoint an equal number of election inspectors from each major political party in each precinct. The RNC’s lawsuit claims that 300 of Wayne County’s 335 election precincts don’t have an equal number of Republican and Democratic commissioners. The lawsuit also claims that Detroit hired only 310 Republican election inspectors, compared to over 2,300 Democratic ones.
The lawsuit alleges that the chair of the Wayne County 12th Congressional District Republican Committee submitted a list of 675 names of Republicans interested in serving as election inspectors to Detroit’s election committee. But the committee only appointed 52 of those submitted names to serve as inspectors.
The RNC is asking the court to order Detroit’s election commission to implement practices to ensure an equal number of Republican and Democratic election inspectors are hired.