Judicial Watch announced that its efforts to enforce the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) have resulted in the removal of five million ineligible names from voter rolls across nearly a dozen states and localities. These actions stem from lawsuits and legal challenges initiated by the organization in recent years.
In Kentucky, the State Board of Elections reported the removal of 735,000 ineligible voter registrations since 2019, following a 2018 consent decree resulting from a Judicial Watch lawsuit. Similarly, New York City removed 918,139 ineligible names as part of a 2022 settlement, including 477,056 names between March 2023 and February 2025.
These developments follow Judicial Watch’s lawsuits against Kentucky in 2017 and New York City in 2022, highlighting inadequate voter roll maintenance. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that removing ineligible names is mandatory. In 2022, Los Angeles County confirmed it had removed 1.2 million names as part of a settlement with Judicial Watch.
Judicial Watch has also taken legal action in Illinois, Oregon, and California, aiming to ensure voter roll accuracy. Its efforts have already led to clean-up actions in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated, “Judicial Watch’s clean-up of over five million dirty names from voter rolls is a historic achievement for clean elections… But there are millions more names to be removed, which is why we are in federal court in three states.”
In a recent case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with Judicial Watch that it was unlawful for Mississippi to count ballots arriving after Election Day. In March 2025, Judicial Watch also filed a lawsuit against California to challenge the state’s practice of counting ballots received up to seven days after Election Day. Judicial Watch also sent a notice to Utah’s Lt. Governor Deidre M. Henderson, warning of a potential lawsuit over noncompliance with the NVRA’s public disclosure requirements.
