A new lawsuit is putting California’s voter rolls under the microscope just as voters head to the polls for this year’s primary races.
Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, joined the American Independent Party of California in suing incumbent Secretary of State Shirley Weber, alleging more than 873,000 inactive voter registrations remain on the state’s rolls.
The complaint, filed with the help of conservative election watchdog Judicial Watch, claims California is violating federal law by failing to remove inactive voter registrations after two general federal elections.
According to the lawsuit, 873,092 inactive registrations have stayed on the rolls for at least three elections. The suit also claims 151,202 registrations have remained on the books after at least four consecutive elections.
The filing further alleges the state has not taken effective action to force counties to clean up the problem, citing what the plaintiffs described as admissions from California officials.
More than 23 million people are currently registered to vote in California.
Judicial Watch previously settled with California and Los Angeles County in 2019, resulting in the removal of more than 1.2 million names from voter rolls.
Since then, the organization claims 20 counties across California have removed 50 or fewer inactive voters, even as census data has shown large numbers of residents leaving the state.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton blasted the state’s voter-roll maintenance in a statement.
“Judicial Watch’s federal lawsuit confirms California has a dirty voting rolls crisis — with thousands of old names on the rolls going back at least 10 years,” Fitton said. “Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. And California and its counties must take immediate steps to clean the over 870,000 dirty names on the voting lists.”
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California’s Western Division.
It seeks to force the state to stop any further alleged violations and require a new voter-roll maintenance program aimed at removing ineligible voters.
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Weber’s office was contacted for comment.
California Democrats have repeatedly defended the state’s election system as safe and secure. But critics, including President Trump, have argued the system is vulnerable and in need of serious scrutiny.
873K Ghost Voters Exposed in California Lawsuit
As voters head to the polls, Judicial Watch has filed a new lawsuit against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber for failing to remove over 873K voters from the rolls.
The suit also asserts the state took no effective… pic.twitter.com/Cq3LujExTU
— Tom Moore (@junogsp7) June 2, 2026
Donald Trump has previously claimed the state’s elections “are a “fraud.””
The lawsuit comes after several troubling voting-related incidents were reported just days before the primary.
On Sunday, officials discovered a voting site had been vandalized and mail-in ballots had been burned inside a drop box.
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That same day, a Bay Area voter reportedly arrived at a closed ballot center Sunday night and found the doors unlocked and the building unsecured.
For Wagner and the plaintiffs, the lawsuit is about forcing California to clean up its voter rolls before old registrations become a bigger problem.
For Weber and state election officials, it marks another legal fight over an election system that has long been defended by Democrats but sharply criticized by conservatives.
With more than 800,000 inactive registrations now at the center of the court battle, California’s handling of its voter rolls is once again becoming a flashpoint in the national fight over election integrity.
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