By J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovksy InsideSources.com

October 10, 2026 - 9:01 pm

Isn’t transparency a hallmark of democracy and honest elections? Doesn’t the public have a right to know who is registered to vote and whether election officials are maintaining accurate, up-to-date rolls to prevent errors, mistakes and fraud from affecting elections?

Federal courts have grappled with this question over the past year.

Now a case is potentially before the Supreme Court — if it accepts it for review — that could resolve the issue. The court should accept the case, from Hawaii, and overrule lower courts that have misinterpreted federal law and treated registration records and maintenance procedures as classified documents no one is allowed to see.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that a state’s list of registered voters is not a document under the “motor voter” law that must be disclosed. This makes it impossible for independent verification that election officials are doing their job and removing voters who have died, moved away, or were never eligible to begin with because they are not U.S. citizens. The law was passed in 1994 as the National Voter Registration Act. It contained transparency requirements that require states to allow the public access to registration records to assess their accuracy.

Yet the 9th Circuit, contrary to Congress’ stated purpose, held that the public is not allowed access to voter rolls. This is the question before the high court — are the lists of eligible voters a list maintenance document under motor voter’s transparency provisions? The obvious answer is “yes,” and other federal appellate courts have disagreed with the 9th Circuit’s incorrect holding.

It matters because one always finds dead and duplicate voters on the rolls. In just one of many examples, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found one Pennsylvania voter — Rashawn Slade — had six active registrations. Duplicates are common across the United States. And so are dead registrants.

Judith Presto was dead when she registered to vote in Pennsylvania. Eventually her husband was arrested for registering Presto, but not before the foundation obtained the voter rolls and cataloged all the dead registrants like her.

The 9th Circuit’s failure to follow the straightforward disclosure requirement of federal law means all mail-voting states such as California, Hawaii, Nevada, Washington and Oregon run elections without transparency.

Congress required transparency to encourage clean elections and allow the public to verify the honesty and fairness of the election process.

Mistakes, duplications and deadwood are readily found on every voter roll. It isn’t a conspiracy. It isn’t necessarily a criminal plot. It more often is administrative laziness or incompetence. The why doesn’t matter because those mistakes can affect elections and disenfranchise legitimate voters. Election officials who do not disclose voter lists escape scrutiny, and the public cannot assess their effectiveness.

Congress mandated public access to “all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted to ensure the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters …” The 9th Circuit misinterpreted this language.

The stakes are significant. The country still lacks a uniform answer to who is entitled to access voter registration data. The Hawaii petition would let the Supreme Court resolve that vital question.

That leaves Hawaii at the center of a defining question: Does the public have these transparency rights or not? In our 250th anniversary year, the absence of a clear national answer — the correct answer — is no small matter. Accurate voter rolls are vital to honest elections, and they belong in the public record, not behind a curtain of state secrecy.

J. Christian Adams is the president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law at Advancing American Freedom. They wrote this for InsideSources.com.