(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it signed a settlement agreement with the State of California and County of Los Angeles under which they will begin the process of removing from their voter registration rolls as many as 1.5 million inactive registered names that may be invalid. These removals are required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Judicial Watch has forced the state of California and Los Angeles county to end its practice of keeping 'inactive' voters on the voter rolls as is required by federal law. Here's the news from the legal watchdog :

The NVRA is a federal law requiring the removal of inactive registrations from the voter rolls after two general federal elections (encompassing from 2 to 4 years). Inactive voter registrations belong, for the most part, to voters who have moved to another county or state or have passed away. Los Angeles County has over 10 million residents, more than the populations of 41 of the 50 United States. California is America’s largest state, with almost 40 million residents.

The state of California, run completely by Democrats, of course, resisted this (at least until the midterm was over). They decided that cleaning up inactive voters from the rolls wasn't in their interest and federal laws were for other states, little states. And as a result, nearly a quarter of California's counties had more voters registered than actual eligible voters. And surprise, surprise, the state has suddenly turned solid blue.

L.A. county's approximately 1.5 million inactive voters on those rolls (112% of age-eligible citizens alone) had been perfect fodder for ballot-harvestors, not this last time at midterms (all of the Democratic ballots harvested in the last midterm have made their voters active voters), but for upcoming elections. That rich bank of potential Democratic votes from ballot-harvesting is now gone with this Judicial Watch agreement.

Ballot-harvesting is a disturbing phenomenon so prone to abuse it's illegal in most states. In California, where it's not, Democratic operatives selectively pay visits to the homes of indifferent voters who don't want to go to the polls or mail in their ballots, engage those voters, and then "help" them fill out their ballots in the way Democrats want. That's why conservative areas such as Orange County were suddenly flipped blue and popular candidates such as Young Kim, who had been winning by large margins on election night - suddenly saw their results flipped. Democrats learned that by extending the election count for weeks, turning in harvested ballot after harvested ballot, they could win any election.

But the harvest had been incomplete, and with many inactive voters, Democrats would need that bank of more potential votes, which likely explains why California's Democrats resisted any cleanup of voter rolls. California may have mailed these people ballots whether they liked it or not or asked for it or not, as they did with all of us, and well, Democratic ballot-harvestors could have easily gotten hold of those unasked for ballots in the mailboxes of dead, moved-away, or incapacitated voters and saw to it that they somehow got cast.

(Judicial Watch is investigating that one, too.)

The state's chief vote counter, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, insists that not a single voter will be disenfranchised, given all his 'safeguards.' His official plan is to mail in a confirmation form to inactive voters and strike their names if they don't respond, but somehow, I suspect the ballot-harvestors will be paying visits to these inactive residents, who may be indifferent and incapacitated voters, and somehow will get them to mail those forms in, too, thereby subverting the process.

That said, Judicial Watch's victory is a great one and frees them up to focus on other areas of abuse that are rife in California, such as non-citizen registrations (the state still says it has no idea how many there are), illegal immigrant votes already cast, ballot harvestors using coercion, foreign ballot-harvestors, gerrymandering, straight out fraud, and the whole cavalcade of Democrat tricks that have disenfranchised conservative voters in the state.

It's a welcome glimmer of light from a one-party state.