Reports of the unusual requests from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) first started to trickle out in May.
It started in Colorado, when Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) received a sweeping, unprecedented request for all of the state’s voting records from the 2024 and 2020 elections — baffling and disturbing election officials and voting rights experts.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D) told NPR. “To my knowledge, this is the first of its kind of request.”
It didn’t stop with Colorado. A month later, other states — among them, Minnesota, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — started to receive letters and emails from DOJ making wide-ranging requests for information to prove compliance with two federal voting laws, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
So far, at least 17 states have received correspondence from DOJ. Most letters came from Maureen Riordan, the former lawyer for a leading right-wing group working to restrict voting access, who is now acting chief of DOJ’s voting section. But a few of the letters were sent by prosecutors in the criminal division. In most of the letters, DOJ demanded to see state voter registration rolls — the statewide list of every registered voter that includes such private data like names, dates of birth, addresses and, in some cases, full or partial social security numbers.
The department plans to eventually contact all 50 states “on NVRA and HAVA matters,” a spokesperson with the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) recently confirmed to Democracy Docket, recounting what DOJ had told NASS.
“I think that should concern all Americans,” David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former trial attorney in DOJ’s voting section, recently told Democracy Docket about DOJ’s recent efforts. “Because it appears the Justice Department is trying to acquire sensitive information on all Americans for who knows what purpose, with very, very questionable statutory authority.”
‘Most of the letters are very vague’
The question at the center of DOJ’s requests — particularly when it comes to their demand for state voter rolls: Do states have to comply and hand over all the data DOJ wants?
There’s no straightforward answer, because laws over federal access to voter registration data — and even over public access to the data — vary by state.
For example, New Hampshire and Minnesota are two of six states that are exempt from the NVRA’s public disclosure provision, which requires states to allow public inspection of voter list maintenance records. (The six states that offered same-day voter registration when the NVRA was passed in 1993 were exempted from some of its requirements). Because of this exemption, DOJ can’t cite the NVRA statute in their demands to New Hampshire or Minnesota to hand over access to state voter rolls.
In both letters to New Hampshire and Minnesota, DOJ instead vaguely cited the state’s obligation under HAVA to allow DOJ access to statewide voter registration lists. HAVA does have some prongs aimed at ensuring the accuracy of voter rolls, but the letters didn’t cite any specific provision.
“Most of the letters are very vague about why the DOJ is asking for this data,” Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights division, as well as a former voting adviser to then-President Joe Biden, told Democracy Docket. “Most of these letters cite generally HAVA and the NVRA. That’s not good enough. HAVA and the NVRA have very particular requirements for state and local jurisdictions.”
Both Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D) and New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan (R) rejected DOJ’s demand for access.
“New Hampshire law authorizes the Secretary of State to release the statewide voter registration list in limited circumstances not applicable here,” Scanlan wrote.
In his response to DOJ’s request, Justin Erickson, general counsel for Simon’s office, echoed concerns raised by Levitt and Becker.
“The Department of Justice did not … identify any legal basis in its June 25 letter that would entitle it to Minnesota’s voter registration list,” Erickson wrote. “Nor did it explain how this information would be used, stored, and secured.”
Privacy Act concerns
Even in states where voter registration data is publicly available — like Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Kansas and Wisconsin, among other states — the federal government doesn’t necessarily have a blanket right to access it.
And it appears that DOJ has not gone through the steps required by law.
As Levitt noted online recently, the voter data DOJ is requesting is subject to Privacy Act disclosure requirements — meaning that, under the Privacy Act of 1974, DOJ can’t just straight-up request private voter data from states, even if it is available to the public under state law.
“The federal government has a history of not treating our personal data all that well, and Congress said, ‘You gotta run through some hoops first,’” Levitt said. “They can probably get it if they run through some hoops first. But the Privacy Act of 1974 says, if the government is collecting new information, or using old information for a new purpose, it’s got to tell the public, it’s got to tell Congress, and it’s got to tell us what it’s using stuff for.”
Levitt said the government needs to disclose: “Who can have access? How’s the data going to be transferred? How’s it going to be secured? Basic stuff that we get to have a conversation about.”
In addition, Levitt said, DOJ needs to provide notice in the Federal Register, with an opportunity for public comment and notifying the proper Congressional committees. Levitt recently noted that DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has not submitted anything that could come close to resembling a Privacy Act notice for obtaining sensitive voter files.
“All of this comes back to there being a set of narrowly tailored circumstances under which DOJ can absolutely gain access to certain data in the voter files,” Levitt said. “In the past, when it’s been done, as far as I’m aware, there’s always been sort of a court-controlled process.”
In the case of DOJ’s letters, there’s no court process happening anywhere.
Why do they want this information?
On Tuesday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) held a press conference to deliver her response to DOJ’s formal request to fork over her state’s voter registration list and voting systems data.
“The Gulf of Maine is awfully cold, but maybe that’s what the DOJ needs to cool down,” Bellows said. “So here’s my answer to Trump’s DOJ today: Go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”
“Turning over the sensitive personal information of every voter in this nation to the Department of Justice sets a very dangerous precedent,” Bellows said in an interview with Democracy Docket, “and not just because President Trump is directing his Justice Department to go after election officials and to relitigate 2020 and cast this version on future elections.”
But states have been cautious in their responses, in part because the department has never made such unusual demands for voting data before.
“Because these requests are unprecedented, it requires detailed research into the federal laws to determine what aspects of the law they may or may not be violating,” Bellows told Democracy Docket. “Maine has always had very strong privacy laws, especially when it comes to voter information. Not every state has the same state-level privacy protection for their voters. So it makes sense that different states are crafting different responses.”
But Bellows is worried about what Trump’s DOJ will do if they amass all the data they’re seeking — sensitive voter registration information of every American.
“The Department of Justice has incredible responsibility and power— they investigate people for crimes and prosecute them,” she said. “Imagine a world in which they had access to the voter information of every American in the country.”
“How can Americans trust that they wouldn’t be investigating people based on political affiliation?” Bellows asked. “And making decisions about whether to move forward with an investigation and a lawsuit, or prosecution based on partisan politics?”