Lawsuit Alleging Marin County Did Not Remove Ineligible Voters by 2024 Election Dismissed by Federal Judge

A lawsuit accusing both Marin County Registrar of Voters Lynda Roberts and Secretary of State Shirley Weber of not removing 944 ineligible voters from the County voter roll before the 2024 general election was dismissed on Wednesday by Federal District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer for failing to state a claim in their complaint.

Over the past 10 years in California, the number of voter roll registration anomaly and ballot harvesting claims have skyrocketed. The 2016 Voter’s Choice Act, as well as the follow-up bills of AB 860 in 2020 and AB 37 in 2021, have made by-mail balloting in California commonplace. Ballots for every election are now sent by-mail to all Californians, which, along with other convenience factors for voters like ballot drop off boxes and allowing by-mail ballots to be counted even after arriving after election day, have made it harder for voting officials to detect fraud and if voters are ineligible or not.

While such anomalies occurred before 2016, as shown by an Election Integrity Project report in 2013 showing that there were more than 60,000 anomalies and irregularities on the voter rolls in Los Angeles County that year, these have become even more commonplace in the past decade. In 2018, ballot harvesting was found to have likely flipped up to seven House seats in California, contributing to the “blue wave” that year. A report in 2020 found that up to 458,000 dead voters could receive ballots prior to the general election that year. And last year two House races in California were won by Democrats because of a large number of late by-mail votes counted well past election day.

Voting anomalies have likewise been prevalent at the County level. While smaller in the number of voters being affected, they have been shown to add up. Last year, multiple counties saw lawsuits go out against their respective Registrar of Voters over such anomalies. This included the Marin County case. Filed in October 2024, a group of voters in Marin County known as the Marin Election Integrity Committee charged that both Roberts and Weber failed to remove 994 voters from the County voter rolls who previously moved out of Marin County.

“One of them is my neighbor,” said Committee Chairman Francis Drouillard in October. “He re-registered in Lake County when he began spending most of his time there. He is now mailed a ballot from Lake County and Marin County. We have no illusion that this is going to change the state or federal results, but I think it could have a significant impact on local races and measures.”

Voter rolls in Marin County

When the group showed Roberts the large number of ineligible voters in the County getting ballots anyway, she responded that they were inaccurate.

“His organization’s reports contain inaccurate and misleading information,” said Roberts in September 2024. “The voter roll data file used to produce the reports was extracted in December 2023. Because the elections department continually processes changes to the voter registration database as required, the 2023 voter rolls used to make claims about ineligible voters are outdated.

“Several sections in the California elections code, plus various other laws, specify circumstances under which voters may retain a local address and live out of state, including temporarily away, employment or business out of state, students at an institution of learning, and those serving in the military living overseas.”

In addition, she refuted several other claims by the group, including almost 8,000 ballots being missed from the 2022 election in the County. With Roberts dismissing their findings out of hand, the group filed in October in the U.S. District Court of Northern California. According to Drouillard v. Roberts, the group said that the County mailed 944 ballots to ineligible voters for the 2024 election. They charged that this failure to remove voters violated the 14th Amendment, as well as the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

The group also asked the judge for a temporary restraining order to block the votes by the 944 voters in question as they were ineligible. Judge Breyer denied the restraining order shortly after the suit was filed, calling their argument a “sparse complaint.” Latching onto this, the Marin County Registrar of Voters filed a motion to dismiss the suit earlier this month, claiming that there was a lack of evidence and that violations were not properly founded. Judge Breyer concurred, and on Thursday, he dismissed the lawsuit, saying that “the plaintiffs lacked standing and failed to state a claim in their complaint.”

While there were concerns about the case, the denial of the Marin County case from progressing further, as well as others facing a similar fate, have only heightened overall voting anomaly distress in California.

“Marin County is only the latest example of some screwy things happening in California voting-wise,” lawyer Gary Dawes, who has been a part of similar cases in the past, explained to the Globe Thursday. “By-mail voting, ballot harvesting, and County Registrars not checking often enough have created this voting system in California where many voters wonder if elections are entirely fair. California has a lot races each election that can be decided by a few thousand votes or less.

“These can be local elections, but, as we’ve seen, these can be House elections too. California may not have an impact on the Presidential election right now, but they sure do for the House. And since 2018, look how many races have been with some thousands of votes that were also facing voter irregularities. It’s staggering.

“Marin County, yeah, 944 votes may not seem like a lot, but it’s the principle of it. The law of it. Every vote matters, and by dismissing this case this early, well, it makes you not trust the system that much more.”