EXCLUSIVE: RNC Takes Election Integrity Fight Across the Pacific Ocean

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Republican National Committee is taking its fight for election integrity all the way to Hawaii.

The RNC filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Hawaii’s chief election officer for allegedly violating the law by refusing to provide public voter roll maintenance. 

“Hawaii citizens deserve to have confidence that their state is properly maintaining voter rolls,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters told The Daily Signal in a statement. “Hawaii has a legal obligation to provide this information and is blatantly breaking their own law.”

The RNC has issued records requests to evaluate election integrity in 48 states and Washington, D.C. The committee’s effort to bring safeguard elections in the Aloha State began in March when the RNC submitted a public records request to Hawaii’s Office of Elections asking for records on the state’s voter roll maintenance procedures.

Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to remove ineligible voters—such as those who have died or moved out of the jurisdiction—from the voter rolls.

Under the Act, states must permit the public to inspect records showing how voter rolls are maintained. But the Office of Elections in Hawaii refused to say whether it has any of the records the RNC requested.

The RNC says Hawaii is also not complying with its own public records law, which requires disclosure when federal law mandates public access.

The committee’s lawsuit aims to force the Office of Elections to produce the requested records.

“Hawaii citizens deserve to know if their election officials are cleaning their voter rolls as required by law, which is why the RNC is suing,” Gruters said.

The RNC is focused on using litigation to help President Donald Trump achieve his goals around election security, an RNC official told The Daily Signal last month.

Trump signed an executive order in March requiring states to use proof of U.S. citizenship for federal voter registration, setting Election Day as the uniform deadline for receiving ballots in federal elections, and conditioning federal election funding on compliance with those and other election-integrity rules. 

The RNC is working to defend Trump’s executive order in states where practices prohibited by the directive continue. While the president is taking the national approach to election integrity, the RNC is coming alongside him with a state-by-state approach. 

“We are challenging these things on a state-by-state basis to make sure that they are compliant with the statutory schemes as constructed now and that they provide the most balanced security as we can have in those states,” the official said.

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