Justice Department demands Illinois hand over voter data. Election officials are debating compliance.

From Chicago Tribune:

Separate from the request for private voter data, the Justice Department in early July waded into a federal lawsuit Judicial Watch and two other conservative organizations brought last year against the Illinois elections board for allegedly failing “to conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to cancel the registrations of Illinois voters who have become ineligible by reason of a change of residence.”

Local election authorities in Lake County and 22 downstate counties, which together reported more than 980,000 voter registrations as of November 2022, had removed only 100 from the rolls in the most recent two-year period, according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. Judicial Watch, in the lawsuit, called that total “absurdly small.”

In its statement of interest in the case, the Justice Department argued the state’s diffuse election system, with 108 local election authorities maintaining their own voter rolls, does not excuse the state board from its responsibilities under federal law.

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