Landmark Legal Fdn. Files Complaint Against California Over Non-Citizen Voting

LEESBURG, Va., Feb. 15, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Landmark Legal Foundation filed a complaint today asking the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate California's voter registration system.  Landmark's complaint exposes a state voter registration system that may be adding thousands of ineligible non-citizen immigrants to the state's voter registration rolls.  The Foundation submitted its complaint to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and the Office of Infrastructure Protection of the Department of Homeland Security.

Landmark alleges that the state of California is failing to follow key provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), requiring states to make "reasonable efforts," to remove the names of state residents who are ineligible to vote from voter registration rolls. Since January 2015, when two state laws went into effect, Sacramento has issued driver's licenses to over 900,000 non-citizen immigrants.  A second law automatically adds any state resident who has virtually any transaction with a state agency to the voter registration rolls, unless they affirmatively decline to be registered.  

In its complaint, which was the result of a year-long investigation by Foundation attorneys, Landmark documents numerous examples of state officials acknowledging that they make no effort to differentiate in the processing of voter registration applications between American citizens who may lawfully vote in federal, state or local elections, and illegal immigrants who are ineligible to participate in primary or general elections.

"Guidance and training distributed by the state prevents employees in state agencies from even enquiring about the immigration status of anyone who interacts with that agency," explained Landmark President Pete Hutchison.  "And the California Secretary of State's office freely admitted that it has no procedures in place to protect the accuracy of the registration rolls."  Michael O'Neill, Assistant General Counsel for the Foundation, noted that the state claims that local voting registrars and precinct-level election officials are expected to police the system and guard against ineligible voters participating in elections.  "The problem with that," O'Neill said, "is that the state does not share with the registrars and local officials any information about non-citizens who have been issued state driver's licenses."

The Foundation's complaint asks Attorney General Sessions, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the Homeland Security Department's Office of Infrastructure Protection (the agency that assumed the duties of the recently disbanded Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity), to use the evidence Landmark gathered to launch a formal investigation into California's compliance with the NVRA.  "If they find what we found," Hutchison said, "we're asking that they go into court and ask a federal judge to force California to obey federal law and protect the integrity of their elections."

Founded in 1976, Landmark Legal Foundation is one of the nation's oldest and most successful IRS-designated nonprofit, public interest conservative legal foundations.  Landmark has offices in Kansas City, MO, and Leesburg, VA.

The full text of Landmark's complaint is available at http://www.landmarklegal.org

SOURCE Landmark Legal Foundation

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