Watchdog files lawsuits over voter registration duplicates, finds millions lacking required ID

With midterm elections a month away, an election integrity watchdog has filed multiple lawsuits in Minnesota over duplicate registered voters while also finding millions of voter registrations in New York missing personal identifying information.

Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative election law nonprofit, filed six lawsuits in Minnesota counties over 515 duplicate registrants. The lawsuits were filed in Nicollet, Dakota, Hennepin, Olmsted, Todd and Ramsey counties.

PILF also found that 3.1 million registered voters in New York were missing personal identifying information, such as a driver's license number or Social Security number, which makes it difficult for the state to accurately maintain its voter rolls.

Under the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), states are prohibited "from accepting a voter registration unless the voter registration contains a unique identifying number such as the last four digits of a social security number or driver's license number," according to a PILF press release.

The voter registration issues PILF discovered in Minnesota and New York could allow people to vote in elections twice or someone else to vote in place of someone who has moved or died.

HAVA also requires states to "implement a computerized statewide voter registration list that is accurate and eliminates duplicate registrations," PILF said in a press release.

PILF President J. Christian Adams told the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show on Tuesday that it's fairly easy for duplicate registrants to appear on voter rolls, as someone could simply register with their full name and middle initial in one instance while using their full middle name in another registration.

"We found a guy in Pittsburgh registered seven times," Adams said.

"This lawsuit flurry," Adams said of the six Minnesota lawsuits, "is hopefully going to clean up some Minnesota problems, because they've had these duplicates on the rolls for a very long time, and some, indeed, are casting two ballots."

One of the duplicates is "in a mental hospital, a convicted child sex offender, managed to cast two ballots in the 2020 election, it looks like," he said.

The Department of Justice Voting Section could fix this issue, as they have almost exclusive authority "to actually do something about inaccurate voter rolls and duplicate voter rolls, and they just don't do it since George [W.] Bush left office," said Adams, who worked in the section under the Bush administration.

Since 2009, "there's been nothing out of the Voting Section at the DOJ to fix this problem," he lamented.