Case Background
Judicial Watch (JW) is a right-wing activist group that is seeking to aggressively purge voters by coercing North Carolina state and county elections officials with a lawsuit claiming violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). JW is using this strategy to attempt to force officials to undertake unnecessary and improper purges that risk inadvertently disenfranchising thousands of eligible voters—directly before this November’s presidential election.
In April 2020, Demos and its partner, the Southern Center for Social Justice (SCSJ), sought to intervene on behalf of the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute (NC APRI) and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina (LWVNC) to help defend the jurisdictions’ list-maintenance practices and protect voters from aggressive purges. This intervention will add the voice of marginalized voters throughout the state, who are at risk of disenfranchisement if JW prevails in forcing the use of legally dubious methods for purging voters. It will also bring to bear Demos’s longstanding NVRA expertise, which can help highlight the myriad methodological and legal errors that riddle JW’s case.
