Democrats are seeking to dismiss a GOP lawsuit that alleged Nevada officials have failed to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls, calling them “recycled allegations” from four years ago based on “no actual evidence.”
In a motion filed Friday on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Nevada Democratic Party, a Carson City judge was asked to toss out the Republican lawsuit from mid-September. It argues the state already has a robust process for ensuring noncitizens do not vote (which is illegal nationwide) and accuses Republicans of seeking a “drastic change” in the home stretch of the election cycle that is not allowed under federal laws.
The lawsuit, filed by former President Donald Trump’s campaign along with the Nevada GOP and Republican National Committee, accused state election officials of not adopting regulations to verify that people on the voter rolls are citizens and that the state has not systematically removed noncitizens from the voter rolls. It says this disadvantages Republicans, and calls for the judge to require officials to conduct systematic voter roll maintenance ahead of the November election.
The lawsuit was the fourth filed by national Republican organizations this year in Nevada, and all other three have either been dismissed or denied but are in various stages of appeal. Republicans have said these lawsuits are necessary to bolster trust in elections, but Democrats argue the suits are destined to fail and are simply a ploy to diminish trust in elections.
“Republicans are running on Trump’s undemocratic, un-American playbook to baselessly sow doubt in our free and fair election,” Amahree Archie, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said in a statement. “They are inventing instances of voter fraud and claiming that eligible voters shouldn’t be registered — all because they know they can’t win this election fair and square.”
A study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that election officials who oversaw 23.5 million votes in the 2016 election referred only about 30 incidents of noncitizen voting for further investigation.
In its motion to dismiss, the Democrats referred to the state’s existing processes to ensure noncitizens cannot vote. The state’s voter registration form’s first question asks about a person’s citizenship, Nevadans can allege that a registered voter is a noncitizen and there are federal laws that classify noncitizens who seek to vote as “inadmissible,” subjecting them to possible deportation or ban on returning to the U.S.
The motion also refers to federal law that prohibits any systematic alteration of a state’s voter rolls less than 90 days before an election. The lawsuit was filed well after that deadline, and another Republican-led voter roll lawsuit in Nevada was dismissed earlier this year in part because of this restriction.
“Plaintiffs have no constitutional right to burden Nevada voters (and election officials) by demanding the Court impose such a new, extra statutory requirement less than six weeks before election day,” the motion read.
The lawsuit claimed that thousands of noncitizens were on the voter rolls in December 2020, “many of whom cast a ballot,” but such reports of election fraud were dismissed by then-Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican who found no evidence of foreign nationals voting.
However, the suit accused Cegavske of an insufficient analysis. Instead, Republicans cited a biannual survey from Harvard University’s Cooperative Election Study where about 4 percent of self-reported noncitizens claimed they were registered to vote. Republicans also referred to public records allegedly finding that about 8 percent of the prospective jury pool in Washoe County District Court claimed disqualification because they were noncitizens — and that jury pools are in part compiled through voter registration lists.
Democrats said the GOP lawsuit is based on faulty allegations.
“They make this extraordinary request based on recycled allegations that some of the Plaintiffs made — and election officials rejected — after the 2020 election,” the motion said. “Nothing has changed since then.”
