On Monday, the Palast Investigative Fund announced it was releasing the names of 90,000 residents of Las Vegas and Reno (Clark and Washoe counties) purged from the voter rolls based on flawed evidence that indicates they have moved. Nevada is a Senate battleground state and these purges could tip the election.
Rather than face me in federal court, Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State, Barbara K. Cegavske, on Thursday turned over the list of every Nevada voter whose registration Cegavske cancelled in 2016 and 2017.
Cegavske used the same notorious “purge by postcard” and “Crosscheck” methods of cleansing voter rolls as GOP Secretaries of State Brian Kemp of Georgia and Kris Kobach of Kansas.
Our experts, reviewing these lists, have found that the overwhelming majority of voters who have supposedly moved out of state or out of their home counties have, in fact, not moved an inch — most remain at their original registration address.
The NAACP and League of Women Voters have cited the “Crosscheck” program used in Nevada and other GOP states as wildly inaccurate and racially biased.
My investigation of these purge systems follows from my original exposé in Rolling Stone.
Nevada’s voting chief Cegavske withheld this data from me for nearly a year — until just one week before the close of voter registration.
Lawyers for the Palast Investigative Fund filed a 90-day notice that Cegavske would face a lawsuit on grounds of Nevada’s violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 for failing to make public the names of voters whose registration the state cancelled and full reason for the cancellation.
The state continues to stonewall this reporter, withholding critical information about Nevada’s participation in the Interstate Crosscheck program. Specifically, thousands of Nevadans apparently lost their right to vote because the Crosscheck list, given to Cegavske by Kris Kobach of Kansas, contained erroneous information that these Nevadans were registered in other states.
Therefore, we are preparing a federal law suit against the state—which will follow our lawsuit against Cegavske’s fellow Secretary of State, Brian Kemp of Georgia — on similar grounds of withholding data on their massive purge operations.
We are preparing to give the purge lists to non-partisan, non-profit groups, including those affiliated with Black Lives Matter and the New Georgia Project who will help locate victims of the purge to help them re-register.
The Palast Fund’s legal actions are supported with the help and advice of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Atlanta NAACP, and other civil rights organizations including the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition whose founder, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, is my co-plaintiff in anti-purge litigation in Illinois.
If you are a Nevada voter, visit this site to see if you've been improperly purged from the voter rolls.
