The League of Women Voters blocked a right-wing voter roll purge plot that would have disenfranchised thousands of Pennsylvania citizens.
The League today announced that Judicial Watch, an extremist right-wing pressure group, has agreed to drop its lawsuit that sought to force the Keystone State to purge thousands of citizens from its voter rolls.
“This is undeniably a victory for voters,” said Samantha Apgar, president of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. “We are proud to have joined this case to prevent voters from being wrongfully purged from the voter rolls. The League will continue to fight for Pennsylvanians and prevent anti-voter groups like Judicial Watch from bullying states and counties into excessive purging and voter disenfranchisement.”
Judicial Watch, an extremist lobby known for disenfranchising voters, filed a civil suit in 2020 against three Pennsylvania counties and then-Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar.
The billionaire-funded pressure group revised the suit in 2021 to sue five other counties instead: Luzerne, Cumberland, Washington, Indiana, and Carbon Counties.
The League joined with liberal ally Common Cause to foil the voter suppression plot.
“Today, we put Judicial Watch’s false claims about the security of our elections to rest. This settlement confirms what the vast majority of Pennsylvanians know: our elections are free and fair,” said Jill Greene, voting and elections manager at Common Cause of Pennsylvania. “We’ll continue to protect our neighbors from attempts by outside groups to rob them of their right to vote.”
Judicial Watch used fabricated data to allege a bogus violation of the National Voter Registration Act.
Copycat lawsuits by other anti-democratic organizations in Allegheny County, Penna., as well as as well as heavily-populated counties in Michigan and North Carolina, also sought to suppress voting in the 2020 general election.
Judicial Watch failed to prove that state officials had violated any federal or state law governing voter roll list maintenance.
Judicial Watch failed to force any purges of the voter rolls.
Judicial Watch failed to any convince any court that the unverified, self-generated data it used corroborated its allegations of faulty voter roll maintenance.
The League of Women Voters and Common Cause succeeded by framing a settlement with Judicial Watch that rejects the right-wing “rigged election” narrative proclaimed by Donald Trump.
Dozens of federal and state courts have rejected similar Federalist Society-inspired voter suppression lawsuits.
The settlement simply requires the Department of State to separately publish online data it already collects and publishes under Pennsylvania law.
The settlement directs Pennsylvania election officials to carve out data for the five county defendants and publish it separately.