Judicial Watch has filed a federal lawsuit accusing California officials of failing to remove hundreds of thousands of inactive voter registrations, arguing that the state’s voter-roll maintenance practices violate federal election law.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, names Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber as the defendant. Judicial Watch brought the case on behalf of Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, a candidate for California secretary of state, and the American Independent Party of California.
At the center of the dispute are 873,092 voter registrations that the organization says have remained continuously inactive for at least three federal elections. According to the complaint, 326,808 registrations have been inactive through at least three consecutive federal general elections, 151,202 through at least four, and 33,922 through at least five. Some of the registrations have therefore remained dormant since before the 2016 presidential election.
Judicial Watch’s federal lawsuit confirms California has a dirty voting rolls crisis – with thousands of old names on the rolls going back at least 10 years. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. California and its counties must take immediate steps to clean up the rolls. pic.twitter.com/QWCQeyr1BA
— Judicial Watch ⚖️ (@JudicialWatch) June 3, 2026
The lawsuit alleges that California has failed to comply with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to make reasonable efforts to remove ineligible voters from registration lists, including people who have moved or died.
Judicial Watch cited a June 2025 report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission showing that 20 California counties removed 50 or fewer inactive voters between November 2022 and November 2024. Ten counties — Alpine, Imperial, Inyo, Kings, Mariposa, Mendocino, Plumas, San Bernardino, Tehama, and Trinity — reported removing no voters under the relevant federal provision.
Those 20 counties collectively reported more than 3.44 million voter registrations but removed only 218 inactive registrations under the key section of the law during the two-year period. San Diego County, by contrast, removed more than 300,000 inactive registrations while reporting approximately 2.2 million registered voters.
The organization also pointed to U.S. Census Bureau migration data showing that large numbers of residents have left California in recent years. According to the figures cited in the lawsuit, approximately 818,000 residents left the state in 2022, 690,000 in 2023, and 660,000 in 2024.
Judicial Watch argues that the limited number of removals reported by several counties is difficult to reconcile with the scale of the state’s population movement. The lawsuit also alleges that 18 California counties currently have more registered voters than the estimated number of voting-age citizens, based on Census data. California has more than 23 million registered voters overall.
The case follows an earlier Judicial Watch lawsuit against California and Los Angeles County that resulted in a 2019 settlement. Under that agreement, more than 1.2 million names were removed from voter rolls.
“Judicial Watch’s federal lawsuit confirms California has a dirty voting rolls crisis – with thousands of old names on the rolls going back at least 10 years,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. And California and its counties must take immediate steps to clean the over 870,000 dirty names on the voting lists.”
[Read More: Democrats Nominate Ally Of ‘Blind Sheikh’]
