Justice Department, elections board object to intervention in voter list lawsuit

The US Department of Justice and North Carolina State Board of Elections both object to requests from outside groups to intervene in a federal lawsuit over the state’s voter lists.

The Democratic National Committee, state NAACP, League of Women Voters of North Carolina, and North Carolina Alliance of Retired Americans all have filed paperwork seeking to join the case as defendants.

The Justice Department filed suit in May against North Carolina, the state elections board, individual board members, and elections director Sam Hayes. The suit claims election officials violated the federal Help America Vote Act by failing to maintain accurate voter lists.

The elections board voted unanimously Tuesday to endorse a plan that would address the Justice Department’s concerns.

“Proposed Intervenors’ stated interests will not be impaired absent intervention in this lawsuit,” wrote state government lawyers in a court filing Monday. The lawyers, all special deputy attorneys general with the North Carolina Department of Justice, represent the elections board.

The filing rejects all three current motions to intervene in the case.

“As a threshold matter, intervention as of right in this action is inconsistent with this Court’s prior ruling in the related cases that HAVA provides no private right of action to a similar organization and its member-voters,” state government lawyers wrote.

Proposed intervenors could focus instead on other existing lawsuits addressing the same issue, including one filed by the Republican National Committee, “not this enforcement action by the United States against the State of North Carolina,” the elections board’s court filing added.

The elections board also questioned the substance of the proposed intervenors’ requests.

“Each of the Proposed Intervenors appears to misunderstand the scope of the relief requested in the complaint,” the board’s lawyers wrote.

“[A] primary interest put forward by each of the Proposed Intervenors to justify intervention is their belief that this lawsuit presents the risk of removal of registered voters from the registration list,” the court filing continued. “But Plaintiff’s complaint contains no request to remove any voter from the registration list. Again, the complaint calls for State Defendants to develop a plan to contact and collect the allegedly missing information from voters in order to update the registration database. It contains no demand that any registered voter be removed from North Carolina’s registration list as part of that process.”

“Thus, because there is no risk of removal from the instant action, Proposed Intervenors’ interest in preventing removals cannot be impaired by this action,” state government lawyers wrote.

“State Defendants respectfully suggest that rather than adding more parties to this action, the better course has already been achieved by designating this case as a related case to the RNC action,” the elections board’s lawyers wrote. “Again, all of the related cases are assigned to the same district judge, all parties are able to adequately present their interests to that same district judge, and any rulings will be consistent between the related cases, such that permissive intervention should be denied.”

The US Justice Department filed paperwork Monday opposing just one of the three motions for intervention. Justice lawyers focused on the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, a group working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm.

“Proposed Intervenor has failed to establish sufficient grounds for intervention, as it lacks standing under controlling authority, it presents a generalized interest in preventing the United States from obtaining relief from Defendants’ violations of Section 303(a)(5) of HAVA, and its speculative basis for intervention fails to articulate any concrete grievance or interest that has been or may be violated,” federal government lawyers wrote. “Proposed Intervenor has failed to meet its burden of demonstrating that it meets the standards for intervention as of right, as set forth in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a), or for permissive intervention, as set forth in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(b).”

US Chief District Judge Richard Myers will oversee the suit as it moves forward. A court order Friday transferred the case to Myers from US District Judge Louise Wood Flanagan. Myers addressed similar issues when dealing with the six-month legal battle between Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin over a seat on North Carolina’s Supreme Court. Myers is also handling the RNC case.

“The DNC, on behalf of itself and its members in North Carolina, … moves to intervene in this matter to protect its unique interest in preventing inconsistent adjudications in this case and other cases in which it has already intervened to defend North Carolina voters against the same baseless allegations that the federal government makes here,” the Democratic group’s lawyers wrote on June 17.

The NAACP’s state conference and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina filed a separate document the same day along with eight people labeled “impacted voters.”

“Hundreds of thousands of North Carolina voters are once again facing the threat of losing their right to vote because of voter registration database issues that stem from the state’s efforts to comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA),” the court filing explained. “Over the last 18 months, these voters have experienced a seemingly endless loop of scrutiny, despite doing everything they can to confirm that they were (or currently are) properly registered.”

“Each action targeted eligible voters — including the Impacted Voters — who followed all the rules for registration, but for whom the registration database does not have a record of a driver’s license or socialsecurity number. Yet the voices of these voters are critically absent from this case,” lawyers for the NAACP and LWVNC wrote.

The Justice Department “has wholly failed to concretely identify any specific voter who was registered contrary to HAVA, and instead simply assumes as much based on imperfect statewide records,” according to a June 2 court filing from the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans. The alliance is working with the Elias Law Group.

“Despite its paltry allegations, the federal government asks this Court to force North Carolina to engage in a herculean data-collection process, contacting every single voter in the state whose registration file appears to be missing information and then collecting that information,” the alliance argued. “The inevitable consequence of the federal government’s lawsuit is clear: voters who cannot be contacted stand to be kicked off the rolls, even if they complied with HAVA when they registered or never had to comply with HAVA at all. The federal government’s paper-thin allegations do not warrant the heavy-handed relief it seeks, which will invariably lead to thousands of eligible North Carolinians losing their registration status.”

The Justice Department filed suit against the state and its elections board on May 27.

“Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in North Carolina are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a news release. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate voter registration rolls in violation of federal voting laws.”

“Defendants have failed to maintain accurate lists in North Carolina’s computerized statewide voter registration in violation of Section 303(a)(5) of HAVA and the sacred trust that the people of the State of North Carolina have put in them to ensure the fairness and integrity of elections for Federal office in the state, necessitating this litigation,” according to the lawsuit.

The Republican National Committee and North Carolina Republican Party filed suit in August 2024 challenging the former Democrat-majority elections board’s handling of the voter registrations discussed in the Justice Department suit.

The GOP complaint challenged 225,000 voter registrations linked to the disputed form. Republican groups asked for the affected voters to be dropped from the voting rolls or required to cast a provisional ballot in the 2024 general election.

Courts refused to force the elections board to take that step.

Republican state Supreme Court candidate Griffin later raised the same issue in ballot challenges after the election. Trailing the Democrat Riggs by 734 votes, Griffin challenged more than 65,000 votes cast in the contest. More than 60,000 of those ballots involved voters whose registration records appeared to lack the required HAVA information.

The state Supreme Court ultimately decided that those votes would count in the final election tally. Griffin conceded the election after a federal judge declined to support a “cure” process that would have affected ballots Griffin challenged for other reasons.

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