(CN) — A federal judge on Friday threw out a lawsuit by the Republican National Committee claiming several counties in Nevada have outdated or inaccurate voter rolls.
U.S. District Judge Cristina Silva, a Joe Biden appointee, agreed with the Nevada secretary of state that the RNC and the Nevada Republican Party, as well as one individual voter, had not adequately argued that they have standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution.
The judge relied on a September decision by the Ninth Circuit in which two Donald Trump appointees had found that nonprofit groups who challenged a couple of Arizona laws they claimed would jeopardize Arizonans’ right to vote if they went into effect lacked Article III standing to bring their claims.
Silva noted that in Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans v. Kristin Mayes, the Ninth Circuit panel found its organizational standing case law has been conflicting and confusing and that, rather than requiring organizations to show actual injury, it has allowed organizations to sue when they have “alleged little more than that they have diverted resources in response to the defendant’s actions to avoid frustrating the organization’s loosely defined mission.”
The claims of the RNC, Silva said, are just that: “harms in the form of a frustrated mission and diverted resources.”
“The amended complaint states that voter lists containing ineligible voters will force the RNC to (1) ‘divert resources away from . . . voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts,’ and (2) divert resources to ensure it is chasing mail ballots of eligible voters, rather than ballots mailed to voters who are no longer eligible to vote.” Silva said.
“Precedent has made clear that these claims do not meet the injury-in-fact requirement,” she added.
The judge allowed the RNC and the Nevada Republican Party, but not the individual plaintiff, to amend their complaint because they didn’t have the benefit of the Ninth Circuit’s Mayes decision when they filed their amended complaint.
Attorneys for the RNC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, accuses the state of violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by neglecting to ensure voter registration records are accurate and updated, a foundational requirement of the act.
Efforts to address these concerns commenced with a formal notice sent to Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar in December 2023 by the plaintiffs, urging compliance with National Voter Registration Act mandates. The state’s inaction has escalated the situation to the current legal challenge, according to the suit.
“At least five counties in Nevada have inordinately high voter registration rates. At least three Nevada counties have more registered voters than they have adult citizens who are over the age of 18. That number of voters is impossibly high. An additional two counties have voter registration rates that exceed 90% of adult citizens over the age of 18. That figure far eclipses the national and statewide voter registration rate in recent elections,” the plaintiffs say in the lawsuit.
In its January reply to the notice sent by the GOP, the state faulted the data the Republican National Committee utilized to assess the accuracy of the state’s voter registration records.
“This is comparing apples to orangutans,” the Nevada attorney general wrote. “The CPS voter registration rates are crude estimates based on historical recall, obtained through personal or telephone interview, intended for an entirely different purpose.”
The AG continued: “We assert that no presently accessible dataset offers a suitable basis for gauging the potential disparity between registration rates and the actual eligible voting population. However, if there is a preference for utilizing U.S. Census Bureau data, we find it puzzling that the more recent 1-year CVAP data has been disregarded. This dataset is relied upon by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for calculating registration rates. Though not a perfect match, it at least presents a comparison akin to comparing apples to another fruit: oranges.”