Funny how this works. The federal government sued 30 states to get their hands on your unredacted voter records. Every single case they’ve finished, they’ve lost. The score is 0 and 21. Zero wins. Twenty-one losses. Nine still pending in Delaware, Washington, Georgia, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, Minnesota, Idaho, and Vermont.
You didn’t hear about it. Of course you didn’t.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsLast Wednesday, a federal clock ran out that most people don’t even know exists. The National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from conducting systematic voter removals during the 90 days before an election. The logic is simple enough that even a politician could understand it: the closer you get to Election Day, the less time a citizen has to fix a mistake or fight a wrongful purge before the polls open. Once that 90-day window closes, the voter rolls are supposed to be locked. No mass deletions. No “routine list maintenance.” No quiet disappearances.
This year, that cutoff actually matters. Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has been pulling every lever it can reach to build a national voter file, with the apparent goal of telling states who to strip from the rolls before November. Marc Elias’s law firm has intervened in the cases to block the data grabs and is, by their count, undefeated. The DOJ has not won a single one.
Ask yourself who benefits when the Justice Department of the United States spends your tax dollars filing 30 lawsuits to seize state voter files and loses all of them. Either they’re incompetent, or the point was never to win. Maybe the point was to normalize the idea that the federal government has a right to your voter data in the first place. File enough lawsuits, lose them all, and you’ve still moved the Overton window. Next time, maybe they file 50. Maybe they win a couple. The precedent creeps forward.
Mark Stebnicki / PexelsMeanwhile, the Supreme Court just gutted another chunk of the Voting Rights Act. In a 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the Court effectively ended the guarantee that communities of color can elect candidates of their choice by allowing politicians to gerrymander them into irrelevance. Common Cause called it what it is: the Court abandoning its duty to enforce the law. They warned that Obergefell, Miranda, and Brown v. Board of Education could all be next on the chopping block.
Two in three voters, including a majority of Republicans and Independents, support a nationwide ban on gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting. The Court did it anyway. Ask yourself who benefits when the will of two-thirds of the country gets overridden by six people in black robes who nobody elected.
Here’s what the establishment doesn’t want you connecting. On one hand, the DOJ is trying to seize state voter files to build a national database. On the other, the Supreme Court is dismantling the legal protections that keep elections fair. One branch grabs for your data. The other strips away your rights. And the people in between, the ones in Congress who are supposed to be passing voting rights legislation, are silent. Common Cause is literally begging them to speak up. That tells you everything.
Theodor Horydczak (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThe 90-day quiet period is now in effect. States cannot purge their rolls. That is a real, concrete barrier between your name and the delete key. It was put there by a federal law that the current administration would happily walk around if it could. The courts have stopped them 21 times so far. Nine cases are still alive.
The next 90 days will tell you whether your vote is yours or theirs. The people who want to decide that for you are counting on you not paying attention.