The Left Tried to Suppress Voter Roll Transparency. They Just Lost—Hard.

Despite the radical Left’s best efforts, the Voter Reference Foundation just scored a massive win that will help clean up New Mexico’s voter rolls for years to come

Rack up another major defeat for Democrats’ voter roll suppression machine, this time in New Mexico.

On Aug. 28, U.S. District Judge James Browning ruled in favor of the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), an election integrity watchdog, against an attempt by New Mexico Democrats to criminalize the American people’s access to the state’s voter rolls. Now citizens once again have public access to those rolls to help identify and scrub ineligible voters from the lists, which is why VRF was founded.

Make no mistake—targeting VRF was a partisan, calculated campaign by far-left Democrats and their attack dog, ProPublica, to criminalize a vital aspect of free and fair elections. Their defeat will go a long way toward preserving free speech and democratic elections.

"Voter Reference Foundation is grateful to the court," VRF executive director Gina Swoboda told Restoration News. "We will continue to work to promote transparency, increasing public confidence and participation in our election process."

Revenge of the Swamp

The proof of the bias is in the timeline.

The Voter Reference Foundation publishes searchable voter rolls in 32 states and the District of Columbia, with the goal of eventually obtaining access in every U.S. state. This data is often purchased at great expense. And in all instances it’s made public in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and are used strictly to promote accurate voter lists.

Enter ProPublica, the attack arm of the Democratic Party.

In Dec. 2021, ProPublica launched an offensive to smear VRF as an “echo chamber” for “far-right conservatives” using “discredited techniques” to “hunt for voter fraud” in support of President Donald Trump. That includes identifying discrepancies between the number of registered voters and the number of votes cast in swing states such as Nevada and Wisconsin during the 2020 election. Notably, the author, Megan O’Matz, routinely hammers Republicans (particularly those in Wisconsin) for “extreme . . . gerrymandering,” “election denial,” “sow[ing] distrust over elections,” “bull[ying] election officials,” and “restricting public discourse.” Balanced journalism you can trust.

www.VoteRef.com

With this hunt in mind, ProPublica honed in on New Mexico, enlisting local secretary of state Maggie Toulouse Oliver to halt publishing voter lists—or dismantle VRF entirely. It’s worth noting that Oliver is an unhinged radical and critic of conservatives she tarnishes as “brainwashed” “election deniers” with a “cult mindset” spreading “grand conspiracy” theories and “misinformation” intended to “dismantle our democracy.” (Incidentally, Oliver has also praised her border state’s illegal alien sanctuary cities, including Santa Fe and Albuquerque.)

Oliver is also a member of the Election Official Legal Defense Network, a front group for the far-left Center for Election Innovation and Research, which received $70 million in 2020 from Mark Zuckerberg in 2020 to boost Democrat get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states. The network bitterly accuses Americans concerned with the condition of their election system of being a threat to democracy.

Speaking with ProPublica, Oliver suggested that VRF’s “posting data about individual voters online is not a permissible use under state law.” They also turned to a spokeswoman for Michigan’s infamous Sec. of State, Jocelyn Benson, to double down:

This is simply another meritless example of election misinformation being disseminated to undermine well-founded faith in Michigan’s election system, and from an organization led by at least one former member of the Trump campaign.

(RELATED: Where Was ‘Neutral’ ProPublica On Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Ethics Violations?)

“Show Me the Man…”

ProPublica reporter Megan O’Matz contacted Oliver on Dec. 14, 2021 to alert them to VRF activity. Alex Curtas, Oliver’s spokesman, replied that “VoteRef.com is misleading the public about New Mexico’s voter rolls and are perpetuating misinformation.” He continued:

They reflect a lack of understanding about how the process of voter list maintenance works. These attempts by political operatives to cast doubt on the 2020 elections are an affront to our democracy and to the professionals who run our elections throughout the country. This most recent attempt that you’ve brought to our attention from VoteRef.com is no different.

. . .

Because accusations from political operatives like this are meant to impugn the integrity of our voter rolls, I’d also just want to note that our Office is confident that the processes and procedures already in place for voter list maintenance not only follow all state and federal guidelines and keep our voter rolls clean and up-to-date, but go above and beyond those requirements.

Emails obtained via open records requestAfter some prodding from ProPublica, Curtas told O’Matz that “our office believes this publication of voter data by VoteRef.com is in direct violation of the New Mexico Election Code. We do not believe that posting New Mexican’s [sic] private voting information online is legal use of this information. We will refer the use of this information by VoteRef.com to the New Mexico Attorney General for criminal investigation and prosecution.” He later called VRF’s publishing voter roll data “misinformation about the 2020 General Election.”

This may count as an inconvenient truth, but VRF publishes the data EXACTLY as it is received from the Secretary of State or election agency in each state. Nothing is added, subtracted, or altered. If the data is misleading, therefore, it's not due to any action by VRF. 

Oliver herself chatted on the phone with O’Matz in early Jan. 2022 to discuss “the dangers of disinformation in the election process.”

Summed up, the picture is clear: Maggie Oliver aimed to punish VRF for granting New Mexicans access to their own voter rolls—but first she had to find the right weapon.

Three days later—and just under one week later after ProPublica’s initial inquiry—on Dec. 20, 2021, Oliver’s office requested New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez take “swift action” against VRF because “voter data can quickly be manipulated and used to spread election misinformation.”

Yet Torres didn't initially announce a criminal investigation into VRF’s posting of voter roll data until one day, in fact, after ProPublica’ published its exposé on VRF on March 7, 2022. Bizarrely, it wasn’t actually Torrez who made that investigation public; it was Oliver—and via tweet:

Important, in-depth piece from @propublica re: coordinated cross-country attempt to impugn the integrity of our voter rolls. This org posted #NM voter data online, violating the Election Code.

Important, in-depth piece from @propublica re: coordinated cross-country attempt to impugn the integrity of our voter rolls. This org posted #NM voter data online, violating the Election Code. https://t.co/5wjoc4VsFW#nmpol #TrustedInfo2022 pic.twitter.com/kj7dHbqu9h

— New Mexico Secretary of State (@NMSecOfState) March 8, 2022

More damning, open records requests discovered that Torrez’s office had recommended the Secretary of State ignore VRF’s multiple requests in February for a list of registered voters “who have been subsequently placed in an inactive, canceled, deleted,” or otherwise removed from the rolls since the 2020 election—presumably because he knew an investigation was in the works.

So did New Mexico law bar VRF from publishing voter roll data? Nope—not until New Mexico Democrats criminalized it a year later in March 2023, anyway. That’s when Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the New Mexico Voting Rights Act into law after a pressure campaign from dozens of professional activist groups ranging from the ACLU, to the pro-felon voting Sentencing Project, the radical Center for Popular Democracy, the local American Federation of Teachers… and Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who bragged about “lead[ing] the effort to enact” the law.

That campaign was orchestrated by the beautifully acronym-ed CCP—that is, the Center for Civic Policy, which agitates for gerrymandered maps favoring Democrats, climate fundamentalism, and get-out-the-vote targeting likely Democratic constituencies (“people of color, women, LGBTQ+, and young people”) to “decolonize” New Mexico.

Among other things, the New Mexico Voting Rights Act conveniently outlawed “the transfer or publication of voter data online” twelve months after Oliver and Torrez claimed it was illegal for VRF to do so. Fair? Forget it, Jake; it’s Santa Fe.

Let Freedom Ring

Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. VRF launched a preemptive lawsuit, took down its New Mexico data in cooperation with the investigation—and won.

On Aug. 28, Judge Browning ruled in VRF’s favor that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 “preempts the State’s Data Sharing Ban and Use Restrictions,” calling the ban a “direct ban[] on core political speech in violation of the First Amendment.”

He also ruled that Oliver and Torrez had engaged in viewpoint discrimination against VRF—attempting to punish them for holding the wrong political views—enjoining them from “engaging in any future viewpoint discrimination against” VRF and dismissing the case with prejudice. For kicks, Browning called VRF’s purpose “regarding the transparency of elections” a “boon to the public” that “furthers the objectives of federal law.”

And the Voter Reference Foundation? Its New Mexico data went back online that day.

(READ MORE: ProPublica—the Attack Arm of the Democratic Party)