This County had 124% More Registered Voters than Eligible Voters – Counting Dead People and Felons

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

In the midst of a national debate over voter integrity, a federal court decree is ordering a Mississippi county to purge its voter rolls of dead people, ineligible felons and people who have moved out of a voting area.

In April, the American Civil Rights Union, a conservative legal group, sued Walthall County, Miss., for having more than twice as many registered voters – 124 percent—than voting-age-eligible residents, based on U.S. Census data. The lawsuit was filed under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as the Motor Voter law, and is the first privately-brought suit to succeed, according to the ACRU.

“This case should have been called United States v. Walthall County instead of ACRU v. Walthall County,” said J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department voting section attorney. Adams along with former Justice Department Voting Section chief Christopher Coates and former DOJ attorney Henry Ross filed the lawsuit for the ACRU.

“We’re doing the job that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. won’t do. In fact, he’s too busy suing Texas for its new photo ID law and abusing power in other ways to harass states that are trying to ensure election integrity,” Adams said in a statement.

Walthall County, Miss. is red county in a red state, is majority white, and was carried Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, according to the Heritage Foundation. This could blunt the argument generally used by Democrats and the Holder Justice Department, that voter integrity measures harm minority voters and benefit Republican candidates.

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