• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. voter registration>

Voter rolls in Pittsburgh littered with multiple registrations and the dead, suit claims

Bill Theobald
February 26, 2020
Voter fraud

The Public Interest Legal Foundation has filed another in a series of lawsuits claiming that election officials are not doing a good job of maintaining voter registration rolls, opening up the possibility of voter fraud.

Tollikoff Photography/Getty Images

The voter rolls in Pennsylvania's second biggest county are a mess and election officials are not doing enough to clean them up, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group focused on election integrity, filed the suit Monday in federal court against David Voye, manager of elections for Allegheny County (which includes Pittsburgh) and members of the county's board of elections.

It is the sixth federal lawsuit filed by the foundation in less than two years highlighting the problems that election officials have in keeping their lists of eligible voters up to date. Other suits have targeted Maryland, Maine, North Carolina, the county that includes Houston and the city of Detroit.


Another conservative group, Judicial Watch, has filed a series of five similar lawsuits in recent years, entering into consent decrees mandating that the voter rolls be cleaned up in California, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Montgomery County, Md., a Washington, D.C. suburb. In January, Judicial Watch sent out letters threatening to sue 19 counties in five states if they did not clean up their voting rolls.

What's at stake, according to these groups and their supporters, is the integrity of our elections and the potential for voter fraud. But critics argue that overly aggressive efforts to clean up voter rolls in the name of virtually nonexistent examples of fraud have improperly removed thousands of people from the registration lists, possibly leaving them unable to vote in the next election. The harshest critics see a conspiracy to remove minority voters from the rolls.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

In the Allegheny County lawsuit, the foundation states that it issued a report two years ago documenting that people who had moved, died or who were not citizens were on the voter registration rolls.

The foundation again reviewed the voter registration list provided by the county in October 2019 and found nearly 4,000 records of people who were registered twice, three times and in some cases four or more times. One person, the suit states, is registered seven times in the county,

In addition, investigators found more than 1,500 dead people were still registered to vote along with hundreds of voter registration records that lacked correct birthdates and suffered from other clerical errors.

The suit, like many of the others, claims that the county is violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires election officials to establish a maintenance plan for keeping the voter registration rolls accurate and to execute that plan. The NVRA is also known as the motor voter law because it made it easier for people to get registered to vote, including by asking people to register when they get their vehicle registrations renewed. That and other efforts caused a swell in the voter rolls in many locations.

The county has 890,785 registered voters, according to the latest figures from the Pennsylvania Department of State. That is about 90 percent of the estimated voting age population, going by the census.

Looking at places where the number of people registered comes close to or exceeds the estimated population 18 years or older is one technique that these conservative groups have used to spot possible problem areas.

Voye, the county election official, said in a statement issued to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that his biggest concern is that everyone eligible gets a chance to vote and that no one is improperly removed from the voter rolls.

Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, was a member of the short-lived, ill-fated Presidential Commission on Election Integrity established by President Trump to track down allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election. Those claims were never verified.

The Allegheny County suit asks the court to find that election officials are violating NVRA, to order them to remove ineligible people from the registration rolls, and to "implement reasonable and effective registration list maintenance programs.'

From Your Site Articles
  • Conservatives say Wisconsin isn't purging voters fast enough - The ... ›
  • Georgia purged 22k voters it shouldn't have - The Fulcrum ›
  • Judicial Watch threatens lawsuits over voter rolls - The Fulcrum ›
  • Pa. home to latest fight over purging or cleaning voter rolls - The Fulcrum ›
  • We have a moral obligation to protect voter registrations - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Voter purge frenzy after federal protections lifted, new report says ›
  • Voter purges: are Republicans trying to rig the 2020 election? | US ... ›
  • Voter Purge Rates Remain High, Analysis Finds | Brennan Center ... ›
voter registration

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Family values and societal results

Debilyn Molineaux
19h

Transpartisanship and transformation

Brenda Marinace
19h

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Our Staff
19h

The American experiment

Kevin Frazier
24 January

The Fahey Q&A with Jasmine Hull of Deliberations.US

Katie Fahey
Courtney Fiedler
24 January

Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Our Staff
24 January
Videos

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff

Video: Veterans for Political Innovation - Who we are

Our Staff

Video: Want to fight polarization? Take a vacation!

Our Staff

Video: Kevin McCarthy is Speaker, but he's got a tough job ahead

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirst Friday End of Year

Our Staff

Video: Minnesota Gov. Walz asks fellow Democrats to ‘Think Big’ when it comes to fixing voting issues

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Our Staff
19h

Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Our Staff
24 January

Video: Chaos or calm: Building confidence in Pennsylvania elections

Our Staff
19 January

Podcast: Pushing back against polarization

Our Staff
18 January
Recommended
Family values and societal results

Family values and societal results

Big Picture
Transpartisanship and transformation

Transpartisanship and transformation

Big Picture
Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Podcasts
image of Statue of Liberty and American flag.

The American experiment

Civic Ed
Jasmine Hull is Chief Operating Officer for Deliberations.US.

The Fahey Q&A with Jasmine Hull of Deliberations.US

Civic Ed
Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Podcasts