The Department of Justice has once again tripped over the basics of litigation in its relentless quest for state voter registration records, blowing a deadline to properly serve Washington’s secretary of state with its lawsuit.
The blunder underscores how DOJ's unprecedented bid to obtain voter rolls from all 50 states, as well as its hiring of several inexperienced voting lawyers after the departure of much of the section, has strained the department's resources and expertise.
In a filing Monday, Eric Neff, the acting chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, said miscommunication with local U.S. attorneys led to the complaint being sent to the wrong addresses. Neff said he then mistook a separate court order in the case — demanding to know why Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs had not yet been properly served — as an extension of the service deadline.
Before coming to DOJ last year, Neff was a Los Angeles County prosecutor who brought flawed charges based on a conspiracy theory pushed by election deniers — a mistake that ended up costing taxpayers $5 million in a settlement and led to his departure from the job.
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