ACRU Sues Two Mississippi Counties over Voter Rolls

WASHINGTON D.C. (April 26, 2013) — On behalf of the American Civil Rights Union, three former U.S. Justice Department attorneys filed lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi seeking an injunction to compel election officials in Jefferson Davis County and Walthall County to clean up their voter rolls.

Like hundreds around the nation, these two counties have more active registered voters than there are voting age-eligible residents, according to data from the U.S. Census and state voter registration offices.

The lawsuit notes that Jefferson Davis County has 10,078 active voters but only 9,536 age-eligible citizens.  “More than 105 percent of living citizens old enough to vote were registered to vote in Jefferson Davis County in 2013,” the lawsuit says.

Walthall County has 14,108 registered voters but only 11,368 age-eligible citizens, which means that 124 percent of Walthall’s eligible voters are registered.

On behalf of the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) and its supporters in Mississippi, the lawsuits, filed by attorneys J. Christian Adams, former DOJ Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates and Henry Ross, also ask the court to order election officials to provide records and data for public inspection as required by Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the “Motor Voter Law.”

The lawsuits are part of the ACRU’s Election Integrity Defense Project, among whose architects are Edwin Meese III, who was U.S. Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and a board member of the ACRU, and J. Kenneth Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State, who is on the ACRU’s policy board.

“We hope to get an affirmative ruling from this court, and then proceed to other counties that have irregularities,” said ACRU Chairman Susan A. Carleson. “The goal is to ensure the integrity of the voting process, without which we cannot continue as a self-governing nation.”