RNC Files Election Integrity Lawsuit In Maryland Over Huge Discrepancy
The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit Friday against Maryland election officials, alleging the state has failed to properly maintain its voter-registration rolls. According to the complaint, registration rates in several Maryland counties are “impossibly high,” with two of the state’s largest counties reporting more registered voters than adult citizens.
The lawsuit also states that 10 additional counties have registration rates above 95% of their adult-citizen populations, even though 2022 U.S. Census Bureau data places Maryland’s overall registration rate at roughly 75.6%, the Daily Caller reported on Friday.
“Marylanders deserve to have confidence in their elections and to know that their state is properly maintaining its voter rolls,” RNC Chair Joe Gruters said. “The State Board of Elections has failed to do its job and remove ineligible or deceased voters from its rolls. Marylanders have a right to accurate voter rolls, which is why the RNC is suing today.”
Election officials are allegedly failing to make reasonable efforts to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and properly tend to voter registration rolls, according to the lawsuit cited by the outlet.
The Office of Legislative Audits of the Maryland General Assembly found in October 2023 that the State Board of Elections’ review of its voter registration data “remained inadequate.” An audit discovered “2,426 potentially deceased individuals with active voter registration and 327 individuals with potential duplicate voter registrations,” according to the report.
Failure to maintain voter lists “burdens the right to vote of the individual Plaintiffs and all individual members of the RNC and MDGOP who are lawfully registered to vote in Maryland by undermining their confidence in the integrity of the electoral process, discouraging their participation in the democratic process, and instilling in them the fear that their legitimate votes will be nullified or diluted by unlawful votes,” the lawsuit states.
In addition, the U.S. Departmen of Justice has also filed a lawsuit against Maryland for failing to produce requested voter registration lists, the outlet reported.
The Maryland suit is part of the DOJ’s move requiring more than half of U.S. states to update and maintain their voter rolls, and a senior department official told Just the News this week that prosecutors believe the lapses that left deceased individuals and non-citizens listed as eligible voters in several Democrat-run states may have been intentional.
“The sloppiness of the elections in blue states is no accident. It is on purpose. It is a feature, not a bug,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet J. Dhillon told Just the News’ streaming news program.
“And the goal is to cram as many people on there and make voters who are not particularly engaged, make it easy for someone else to help them fill out their ballot and return it for them when they didn’t care enough to do it themselves,” she added.
“What we can do at the federal government level is ensure that our federal election laws are observed, and that includes each state’s requirement to keep clean voter rolls,” she added. “That is a fundamental basic.”
Dhillon spoke one day after her division filed lawsuits against six Democrat-led states — Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Washington state and Vermont — seeking court orders requiring them to provide voter-registration records to the Justice Department. The filings state that the DOJ intends to examine the rolls for irregularities, outdated or duplicate entries, and other potential violations of federal list-maintenance requirements, the outlet reported.
She also reached an agreement last week with North Carolina requiring the state to review and correct more than 100,000 voter registrations that were added without meeting state legal requirements.
Dhillon said her office is now on track — through litigation, settlements or voluntary compliance — to require at least 26 states to update and clean their voter rolls.
“We’re now in litigation with 14 states. So the six yesterday included Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Washington State and Vermont. That adds to eight we already had going,” she said.
Top DHS Special Agent And His Wife Found Dead
A Department of Homeland Security special agent and his wife were found dead in their New Jersey home in what appears to be a murder-suicide, prosecutors said.
Police in Sayreville responded to the couple’s home on Glynn Court around 8 p.m. July 3 and found Kelly Latauro, 46, dead inside the residence, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said.
Her husband, 52-year-old Christopher Latauro, was discovered dead in the backyard.
Both appear to have been shot.
Authorities said Christopher is believed to be the shooter and the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Police told residents to keep away from Glynn Court, from Deerfield Road to Scarlet Drive, briefly because of police activity.
The area was reopened about 40 minutes later, but police remained on scene.
According to NJ101.5, citing DHS records from 2019 and 2020, Christopher was a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities have not said what may have sparked the violence.
Kelly’s sister-in-law Robyn Perlman-Spencer confirmed her death in a Facebook post on July 7, remembering her in a heartbreaking tribute.
“As many of you may now know, my beautiful sister in law Kelly Iatauro was senselessly and suddenly taken from us on Friday. Kelly was a bright light- kind, thoughtful, hysterical, inappropriate, and just one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. She left a lasting impression on anyone that was lucky enough to know her,” Robyn wrote in part.
Sayreville police confirmed officers responded to the Glynn Court residence on July 3 and found both people dead of gunshot wounds.
The incident is being treated as a murder-suicide, and Christopher is suspected to be the shooter, the spokesperson said.
The Department of Homeland Security and Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment on the case.
What began as a heavy police response to a deadly scene left two people dead and the quiet Middlesex County neighborhood stunned.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened inside the home leading up to the gunfire.
Separately, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made headlines last week with an election-related announcement.
Mullin on Friday said officials who don’t cooperate with the administration’s election security efforts may be slapped with fines — and potentially prison time.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections — and they chose not to — then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said during a press conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Mullin also promised DHS would work to “speed up our security enhancements” for states.
He vowed to hold up federal election security grants until state officials took steps the administration demanded, including running their voter registration lists through a system that checks for non-citizen voters on the rolls.
Mullin made his comments after President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election security Thursday night, when he repeated already known concerns about the security of voting systems, alleged Chinese efforts to get into voter rolls, and aired old gripes about the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In his remarks on Friday, the DHS secretary focused on DHS’s work with states to secure election systems and scrub voter registration rolls for fraud and concerns about noncitizen voting.
The Justice Department also sent letters this month threatening prosecution to election officials across the country if they don’t remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
On Friday, Mullin seemed to suggest that the agency was able to estimate the numbers using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and said 23 states are already working with DHS to analyze voter rolls.
And he criticized the legal challenges that are hindering the administration’s efforts: Last month, a judge blocked the Trump administration from creating a database of information about Americans, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status.
