Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias moved this week to intervene in a Trump Justice Department lawsuit filed last week against North Carolina for the state’s alleged inaccurate voter registration rolls.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit alleges North Carolina’s Board of Elections used a state voter registration form that failed to require voters to provide identifying information such as a driver’s license or the last four digits of a Social Security number, as required under the federal Help America Vote Act.
The Justice Department said that the litigation advances President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14248, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” to ensure enforcement of existing federal election laws.
The North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans hired Elias’ firm, the Elias Law Group, for a motion to intervene in the case, the Carolina Journal reported. Elias has been a staple in election litigation cases, representing Democrat candidates and liberal interest groups for about two decades, notably representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The North Carolina Board of Elections has had a new 3-2 Republican majority since May and is potentially less likely to defend the legal challenge by a Republican administration.
Elias’ motion notes that before the 2024 election, the Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit similar to the Justice Department’s suit against the state and that the losing GOP candidate in a state Supreme Court race made similar complaints.
“Now, the federal government has joined the fray, echoing the alarmist tone of these past suits,” the motion says.
Four lawyers from Washington-based Elias Law Group are listed on the motion as well as one from the Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based law firm of Patterson Harkavy.
But the motion says the government’s lawsuit doesn’t identify a single voter who was registered in a way that was noncompliant with the Help America Vote Act.
“Despite its paltry allegations, the federal government asks this court to force North Carolina to engage in a herculean data-collection process, contacting every single voter in the state whose registration file appears to be missing information and then collecting that information,” the lawyers for the retirement alliance argued in the motion. “The inevitable consequence of the federal government’s lawsuit is clear: Voters who cannot be contacted stand to be kicked off the rolls, even if they complied with HAVA [Help America Vote Act] when they registered or never had to comply with HAVA at all.”
In filing the lawsuit last week, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a public statement: “Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in North Carolina are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud. … The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate voter registration rolls in violation of federal voting laws.”
The Justice Department lawsuit says the state “failed to maintain accurate lists in North Carolina’s computerized statewide voter registration” database in violation of Section 303(a)(5) of the federal law, which requires a Social Security number, driver’s license, or other identification.
The federal lawsuit notes the Help America Vote Act says, “States are encouraged to use the unique identifier to share information with other governmental offices for purposes such as death certificates, court and tax records, etc., to assure proper maintenance of voter records, file integrity, and protection of voter rights.”
