This article lays out the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division findings on voter-roll problems uncovered during a review of tens of millions of records, the legal and political implications for election integrity, and why these discoveries reinforce calls for stronger verification measures such as the SAVE America Act.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told Newsmax that a review covering between 50 and 60 million voter records turned up “hundreds of thousands” of entries that should not be active. The issues listed include deceased registrants, people who moved, duplicate entries, and non-citizens appearing on rolls, creating real risks for the accuracy of mailed ballots and other vote-by-mail processes. She described video evidence and past legal findings that point to systemic weaknesses in how some jurisdictions maintain voter lists.
Dhillon emphasized that these problems are not theoretical. She pointed to Los Angeles County’s 2017 settlement with Judicial Watch that acknowledged more than a million records that should not have been on the rolls, using that example to warn how outdated lists can interact with no-ID voting systems to produce chaos. From a Republican perspective, these failures highlight why stricter verification and maintenance of voter lists are essential to protect election integrity.
AAG Dhillon said:
We had run some records for some states, I think we had run in between 50 and 60 million voter record so far, you know, during this president’s tenure. And we have found hundreds of thousands of people who shouldn’t be on the voter rolls. People who are dead, people who moved, duplicate registrations. We have also found, separately, non-citizens on the voter rolls, and so now we’re doing our due diligence to identify the extent to which they may or may not have voted, and sometimes people are enrolled on the voter rolls, and we’ve just seen some crazy videos from California, that show homeless people being used to sign petitions, and register to vote, they sign affidavits, they can sign ballots for somebody else, and fill in. That’s easy when you have a system where there’s no voter ID, ballots are being mailed to outdated voting lists, this is not a fiction or a fantasy. Los Angeles County in 2017 agreed with a lawsuit by Judicial Watch, that there were over one million people in that county alone who should not have been on the voter rolls.
The Justice Department has pursued litigation in many states to obtain full voter registration lists, and the Civil Rights Division says suits have been filed where states failed to provide those records for review and audit. From a conservative viewpoint, transparency in voter rolls is a nonpartisan necessity; without accurate lists, confidence in outcomes evaporates. Legal action is one of the few tools able to pry loose information and force counties and states to correct their rolls.
Beyond litigation, the policy response Republicans favor focuses on practical fixes: stronger ID requirements, routine purges of deceased and duplicate records, and cross-checks with other government databases to verify citizenship and residency. Those reforms are meant to prevent ballots from being sent to people who no longer live at an address or to names that should not be active at all. Opponents argue about access and suppression, but the common-sense aim is to match the voter rolls to reality so elections mean what they claim to mean.
The political stakes are clear. When major urban counties operate under lax roll maintenance, mailed ballots and signature-based processes become vulnerable to abuse or error. Republican leaders point out that this problem coincides with broader policy choices in many Democratic-run cities—policies that prioritize mail-in voting without matching investments in verification and list hygiene. The result is a system that invites controversy and makes disputed outcomes more likely.
Practical examples reported by investigators and advocates include duplicate registrations and records for people who have moved or died, plus incidents where vulnerable people were used to sign petitions or registration forms. Those instances illustrate how weak safeguards can be exploited, intentionally or not, when no robust identity checks are required. Fixing those weaknesses requires both laws and enforcement mechanisms that produce cleaner rolls and fewer opportunities for misconduct.
Legislation like the SAVE America Act is presented by its supporters as a way to standardize many of these protections nationwide and make enforcement consistent across states. Republicans argue that national standards for roll maintenance, combined with common-sense voter ID and verification practices, will restore trust and reduce litigation over contested elections. Critics claim such measures can suppress turnout, but advocates counter that credible elections benefit every citizen and every party.
As the midterm cycle approaches, this issue will influence messaging and priorities for conservative campaigns that want to defend the integrity of elections and promote confidence in results. The findings Dhillon described serve both as evidence of a problem and as a rallying point for policy proposals focused on repair and prevention. For those who care about secure, reliable voting, the challenge is to translate audits and lawsuits into durable administrative and legal fixes.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
Add comment