Chippewa Valley Times

The election integrity group Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), which added Wisconsin to its rolls in December 2021, has filed suit against officials in New Mexico seeking to guarantee publication of the state's voter rolls.

VRF recently filed the First Amendment lawsuit, seeking to prompt the U.S. District Court in Albuquerque to assert VRF's right to publish the voter rolls for taxpayers to view, a report on JustheNews.com said.

The suit takes direct aim at Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, alleging she falsely asserted in public statements that VRF illegally published New Mexico's voter rolls. The suit further claims that Oliver has a history of refusing to release public voting records, as she did in 2017 when former President Trump requested them.

"The taxpayers of New Mexico pay for election administration, and they have an absolute right to view the records that are produced," Doug Truax, founder and president of Restoration Action, said in the report. "Confidence in American elections is at a low ebb, and one reason is a lack of transparency."

Restoration Action started VRF in 2021.  

The lawsuit further claims that the state's law regarding the publication of voter data violates both the First and Fifth Amendments since it "fails to give notice as to what uses are permissible and which are prohibited."

All of it has left Truax even more determined.

"We are not going to be deterred by partisan election officials who believe the election records taxpayers pay for are their personal possessions," he said in the report. "The public has a right to see them and if they try to block us, we will assert that right in court."

As part of its legal actions, VRF is now requesting a declaratory judgment to continue publishing voter rolls and a preliminary and permanent injunction to prevent Oliver and State Attorney General Hector Balderas "from enforcing any statute in violation of Plaintiffs' rights," the lawsuit said.

Wisconsin is now one of 20 states included in the VoteRef.com database, with the ultimate goal being to include every registered voter from every state in hopes of keeping the voter files up to date in near real-time, a release issued on VoteRef.com said.

In the states uploaded so far, discrepancies between the number of voters listed as casting ballots in 2020 (according to the voter list) and the number of voters reported by a state's official turnout report varies from as low as 42 votes in North Carolina to tens of thousands in Virginia (60,021).

Wisconsin is the only state whose voting records showed a different problem.

"The fact that Wisconsin's results revealed an entirely new issue, one in which the official data reflected more voters having voted than there were ballots cast statewide, demonstrates the urgency of the work we are doing," VRF Executive Director Gina Swoboda said in the VoteRef release. "The public needs transparency and the discrepancies in the data that we are finding confirms that there is more work to be done to ensure the integrity of the process."