Protecting Nevadans from Voter Purge Efforts (RNC v. Aguilar)
At a Glance
Partisan actors have filed lawsuits challenging Nevada’s voter list maintenance practices and seeking more aggressive removal of voters from the rolls than federal law requires. CLC is filing a friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief alongside the ACLU of Nevada in support of Nevada’s Secretary of State and county election officials, urging the court to dismiss the case.
Back to topAbout this Case
The Republican National Committee, the Nevada Republican Party, and a Nevada voter filed a lawsuit against Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and local election officials challenging the state’s efforts to maintain its voter rolls. The suit claims that the state must be violating its obligations under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) because certain misleading metrics show more registered voters than eligible voters in some counties.
CLC, with the ACLU of Nevada, filed a friend-of-the-court brief explaining that this suit is based on deeply flawed and misleading metrics that have been repeatedly rebuked by federal courts. Namely, the lawsuit uses incompatible data sources to piece together unreliable and inaccurate measures of voter registration rates. They rely on voter registration numbers taken from a single recent snapshot of the state’s voter roll on the one hand, and outdated census estimates of the citizen voting age population on the other. No conclusions about a state’s voter roll management can be drawn from this apples-to-oranges comparison.
Unfortunately, this lawsuit is part of a years-long pattern of filing frivolous claims under the NVRA to bully states into conducting voter roll purges beyond what the law requires. CLC’s brief points out that these efforts are not only contrary to federal law but also risk improper removal of eligible voters from the state’s voter rolls. When states rush to purge voters without proper guardrails, eligible voters are invariably kicked off the rolls, directly infringing on the freedom to vote.
This effort is ramping up during the 2024 election cycle. This is one of several cases filed across the country in recent weeks questioning—without evidence—states’ efforts to manage their voter rolls. Though they are billed as suits to promote election integrity, baseless claims of electoral misconduct actually have the opposite effect. They risk disenfranchising eligible voters, spread false information about elections, tie up election officials’ limited time in litigation during a busy election year, erode public confidence, and intensify the risk of harassment against the public officials working diligently to administer elections.