Another Mississippi county agrees to take dead people, felons and double-registered individuals off its voter rolls.
HATTIESBURG, MS (Oct. 21, 2013) —- Officials in Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi have signed a consent decree agreeing to clean up voter rolls in accordance with a lawsuit filed in April by the (ACRU) under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (commonly called “Motor Voter”).
“So far, we’re batting one thousand on these suits aimed at ensuring election integrity,” said ACRU Chairman and CEO Susan A. Carleson. “It’s on to Texas, where we have already alerted 15 counties that they also have severe voting roll disparities.”
As with nearby Walthall County, which signed a consent decree with the ACRU on Sept. 4, Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis County had more registered voters than voting-age-eligible residents and had not cleaned up its voter rolls in years. It was discovered during the litigation that the county had failed to follow federal law regarding the proper removal of voters.
The United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi entered the final consent decree today that requires the defendants to check the county’s rolls against state and federal databases to identify and remove ineligible voters.
J. Christian Adams, the former Justice Department (DOJ) Voting Section attorney who along with former Justice Department Voting Section chief Christopher Coates and former DOJ attorney Henry Ross filed the lawsuit, said the ACRU had to act because Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. refuses to enforce federal election laws prohibiting dirty voter rolls while he leads the charge against state voter ID laws in defiance of the Supreme Court precedent upholding such state laws in 2008.
“Private plaintiffs are forced to do the work that Attorney General Holder refuses to do,” Adams said. “Over four million ineligible voters were on the rolls for last year’s Presidential election. That’s a national disgrace. Corrupted voter rolls have to be fixed so Americans can once again have faith in our elections. Step one for voter fraud is to have corrupt rolls.”
Carleson added, “American voters have the right to assume that their ballots will count and won’t be stolen by someone voting illegally. Without safeguards against vote fraud, people will lose faith in the system, undermining our ability to be a self-governing nation.”
