BOSTON — The state’s top election official is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit from a conservative group with ties to Republican President Donald Trump that claims it was denied access to state voter registration records.
The lawsuit, filed in October by the Ohio-based Voter Reference Foundation, alleges that Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s office is violating a provision of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, requiring states to publicly share how they maintain their voter lists for a period of at least two years.
The complaint alleges that the group tried to get a copy of voter lists including names, dates of birth, party affiliation, home addresses and polling places but Galvin’s office refused to release the information. It argues that Galvin’s refusal to release the lists violates its First Amendment right to share the data online.
But Galvin’s office is trying to get the lawsuit dismissed after a federal judge two weeks ago rejected a similar legal challenge filed last August from the Committee for Massachusetts Voter Identification Ballot Question, a group that advocates for voter ID requirements.
In that ruling, U.S. District Court judge Nathaniel Gorton dismissed the group’s legal arguments as “unavailing” and said the court’s review of the complaint determined Massachusetts’ delegation of voter registration record-keeping to cities and towns is “not inconsistent” with the federal law.
“Even if the Massachusetts delegation system is wildly and unnecessarily decentralized, the NVRA does not require that it be otherwise,” Gorton wrote in the 15-page ruling.
But lawyers for the Voter Reference Foundation argue the legal challenges are different, and that the judge in the Voter ID ruling didn’t address the issue of whether the state’s voter registration system was preempted by the federal law.
The foundation said the “fragmented” voter rolls make it nearly impossible to get a complete picture of the state’s electorate at a given point in time.
“Because each locality’s narrow snapshot occurs at different times, the resulting 351 fragments can’t be reassembled into the full list as it existed at a single point in time — even if hundreds of officials each complied,” the foundation’s lawyers wrote in a court filing. “In practice, this approach places the list beyond the public’s reach.”
In previous court filings, the foundation said it is seeking to publish “publicly available Massachusetts voter data” on its website, “so that the public may become and remain informed regarding Massachusetts elections and voter registration rolls” and to ensure oversight of the voter registration records.
“Massachusetts cannot hide behind state law to avoid its federal disclosure obligations,” the foundation’s lawyers wrote in the 25-page complaint. “Its restrictions on public access are preempted.”
The legal challenges are part of a nationwide push by conservative groups who are challenging the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations across the country
Those groups have filed hundreds of public records requests across the country seeking to gain access to voter files, many of them stemming from Trump’s baseless claims the 2020 election was rigged against him. In most states, the disputes have landed in the courts.
The foundation is a subsidiary of Restoration of America, a conservative social welfare organization that has received a sizable amount of its funding from Wisconsin billionaire Richard Uihlein, a major fundraiser for Trump’s presidential campaigns.
“America’s elections aren’t secure,” the group said in a video on its website, touting voter registration lawsuits against states. “It’s not a fringe conspiracy, it’s a fact.”
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.