Maryland Elections Board sued for hiding voter registration records

The left likes to claim that voter fraud is rare and mostly involves foreign nations. However, the truth is voter rolls are in poor shape in far too many areas of the country leading to cases like this one in Maryland.

A watchdog group is suing the Maryland state board of elections for hiding voter registration records.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an Indiana-based election integrity group, filed a complaint Dec. 16 against several individuals with Maryland’s state board of elections for alleged violations of the National Voter Registration Act’s public disclosure provision. The group sought a copy of the statewide voter registration list on Nov. 13 and offered to pay the required fees for the records. Two days later, an individual with the board of elections denied PILF’s request, stating that only Maryland residents can obtain voter data.

“Maryland stood to make at least $250 from selling their voter data like usual, but decided to flaunt a recent court decision against them and refused PILF’s application,” Logan Churchwell, communications director at PILF, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Now, they have to defend a second federal lawsuit and risk paying attorneys’ fees. It doesn’t pay to hide public records—and here, it’s actually profitable to disclose them.”

“This case is greater than a denied open records request,” Churchwell continued. “This is a statement to election officials around the nation that you cannot expect to get away with denying a critical voting right—the right to inspect our election records.”

Maryland’s state board of elections did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The lawsuit comes as PILF has found instances across the country of duplicate registrations, deceased individuals still registered to vote, and voter rolls that contain more individuals than there are eligible voters.