“It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dead,” he said, “but if you’re 130 years old, either find a gravestone, or call Guinness!”

The case illustrates the very real problem with so many voter rolls in the country, where elected supervisors have often neglected, or even refused, to take steps to ensure that the roll is an accurate list of eligible registered voters.

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On Tuesday, Churchwell was waiting to testify in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami about the failure of the Broward County supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, to maintain the county’s voter roll.

The roll, according to the ACRU, potentially has tens of thousands of names of people on it who are ineligible to vote.

The suit is being brought on behalf of ACRU and Broward County resident Andrea Bellitto, whose vote, along with the votes of all other citizens in Broward County, could be canceled out by those voting illegally.

Broward County, home to Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Deerfield Beach, has 597,172 registered Democrats, 255,897 Republicans and 327,053 voters registered with no party affiliation. There are a total of 1,183,414 voters on the roll as of July 25, 2017.

In 2015, in studying Broward County voter data collected by the Election Assistance Commission, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found that at the time of the 2014 midterm elections, 103 percent of citizens of voting age in the county were registered to vote – an impossibility, of course. Four years earlier, in 2010, 106 percent of citizens of voting age in Broward County were registered to vote. The foundation used official U.S. Census numbers to determine the number of citizens of voting age in the county. The Census numbers have never been disputed by any court, says Churchwell, and in a similar case filed by PILF, against Wake County, N.C., the defendant settled the case, agreeing to do more to check for and remove ineligible voters.

Last year, ACRU sent letters to the office of the Broward County Supervisor of Elections requesting specific information about how the voter roll was being maintained, and how many ineligible voters were being removed and how often. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (“Motor Voter”), those in charge of voter rolls are required to maintain the roll to ensure that it is an accurate list of eligible voters.

Brenda Snipes, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, responded to the letters by saying it was “implausible” that there are ineligible voters on the roll, insisting that she was following the requirements of the law, without providing specific evidence.

“As soon as these jurisdictions get their back up and refuse to start answering questions, that’s when a lawsuit can start,” says Churchwell.

Snipes is a Democrat and former teacher who was appointed by then Gov. Jeb Bush in 2003 to serve as Broward’s elections chief. She has run in every subsequent election, and has served as the supervisor of elections in Broward County continuously for the last 14 years. Snipes is the named defendant in the suit, but she is not alone. After filing the suit, the local SEIU chapter representing healthcare workers in the county joined as an intervener, to defend against the charges and to prevent names from being removed from the Broward County voter roll. The group Demos, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, is contributing to the legal defense of Snipes, and working to prevent any and all names from being removed from Broward’s voter roll.