In the final days of the 2024 election cycle, a Chicago federal judge has, for now, turned aside an effort by a conservative election watchdog group to force Illinois state and county election officials to do more to ensure they are accurately maintaining the state's voter lists and removing those no longer eligible to vote from the rolls, as federal law requires.
On Oct. 28, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis dismissed large parts of a lawsuit brought by conservative activist group Judicial Watch and two Illinois-based conservative political action organizations.
Ellis was appointed to the federal court by former President Barack Obama.
In the ruling, Ellis largely sided with the Illinois Board of Elections and two prominent labor unions, the AFL-CIO and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, who had been granted special permission by the court to also defend against Judicial Watch's lawsuit.
Ellis agreed the plaintiffs lacked standing to ask the court to enforce sections of the federal National Voter Registration Act, which requires state and local election authorities to properly "clean" and maintain their voter rolls and report data concerning their audits of voter registration eligibility and purges of ineligible voters.
While the U.S. Supreme Court has declared such voter roll maintenance to be mandatory, Ellis agreed the groups had no legal standing to seek to enforce those provisions.
Ellis did not explain her reasoning in the written order.
The judge, however, agreed to allow Judicial Watch to continue with its action seeking to force the state and other election authorities to turn over reports and other information concerning their efforts to ensure "the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters."
This information can include "lists of the names and addresses of all persons to whom" election authorities may have attempted to send notices of voter ineligibility.
The lawsuit landed in Chicago federal court in March, when Judicial Watch filed suit.
Co-plaintiffs on the action include local political organizations Illinois Family Action, of Tinley Park, and Breakthrough Ideas, of Wheaton. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiff Carol J. Davis, identified as a registered voter in DuPage County.
Judicial Watch claimed that as many as 60% of the jurisdictions that administer elections - including the state's most populous counties, such as Cook, Lake and Kane counties, and the cities of Chicago and East St. Louis - have either removed an "absurdly small" number of ineligible voters from their rolls or have refused to report data concerning their voting list maintenance altogether.
The lawsuit asserts this has resulated in numerous instances in which a city's or county's number of supposedly eligible voters outnumbers its actual population as calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Such innaccuracies if left uncorrected have served as fodder for those pushing election fraud claims, such as those that have run rampant since 2020.
In Illinois, however, the alleged lack of voter roll maintenance has resulted in an instance in which 23 Illinois counties, with a combined 980,000 voters, removed only 100 ineligible voters from their rolls since 2020, according to the Judicial Watch lawsuit.
"There is no possible way these counties can be conducting a general program that makes a reasonable effort to cancel the registrations of voters who have become ineligible because of a change of residence while removing so few registrations (as required by federal law)," Judicial Watch states in its lawsuit.
The lawsuit asserts Illinois and its local election authorities are out of compliance with the federal National Voter Registration Act, which requires them to properly "clean" and maintain their voter rolls and report data concerning their voter registration eligibility audits and purges.
In addition to increasing potential for vote fraud - or at least casting doubt on the integrity of elections in Illinois - Judicial Watch's co-plaintiffs said inaccurate voter rolls also cost them time and money, by making it more difficult for such political organizations to conduct voter outreach and issue advocacy campaigns.
The lawsuit seeks court orders declaring Illinois is in violation of the NVRA law and requiring the state to "develop and implement a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the registrations of ineligible registrants from the voter rills in Illinois."
In response, the Illinois State Board of Elections asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, asserting they are doing more to comply with the NVRA than Judicial Watch claims, despite an apparent dearth of public data backing that assertion.
The state claims it "cross-references the 'statewide voter registration databased against the U.S. Postal Service's National Change of Address database" twice a year and then shares the results of those cross-checks with local election authorities.
The ISBE asserts this, combined with other steps, has actually resulted in the removal of hundreds of thousands of voters from the statewide voter registration list.
The state asserts the data "shows that Illinois is making more than a reasonable effort to remove ineligible voters."
The state has been backed in their efforts to turn aside Judicial Watch's voter roll maintenance enforcement action by the AFL-CIO and Illinois teachers union.
In asking to intervene, the unions claimed the Judicial Watch lawsuit threatens their members' interests, by potentially exposing their union members to being improperly kicked off the voter registration lists.
The unions are strong political allies and financial supporters of the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates in Illinois.
Judge Ellis said the dismissal order was without prejudice and she gave the plaintiffs until Nov. 29 to file an amended complaint that could address the shortcomings the judge believes were present in their original pleading.
Judicial Watch and its co-plaintiffs are represented in the action by attorneys Christine Svenson, of Chalmers Adams Backler & Kaufman, of Palatine; and Paul J. Orfanedes, Robert D. Popper, Eric W. Lee and T. Russell Nobile, of Judicial Watch.
The unions are represented by attorneys Sarah F. Weiss, of Jenner & Block, of Chicago; and Elisabeth C. Frost, Jyoti Jasrasaria and Julie Zuckerbrod, of the Elias Law Group, of Washington, D.C.