In recent weeks, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has doubled down on its sweeping bid to wrangle private voter data from states — including by threatening legal action.
The department has received a range of responses, with some states handing over the requested information, or parts of it, and others telling DOJ to pound sand.
In letters to the states, the department has said it wants the information to ensure states are complying with two federal laws, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which both have provisions aimed at ensuring states are keeping accurate rolls.
But as Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights division, has noted, both of those laws put list maintenance in the hands of the states.
In fact, according to Levitt, “data on particular individuals isn’t particularly helpful in enforcing the NVRA/HAVA provisions the letters cite.”
No surprise, then, that some election officials and other election experts fear there’s a lot more to it than that.
Some worry the trove of voter data, taken out of context, could offer a goldmine of misleading evidence to allow the Trump administration to super-charge its false narrative about rampant illegal voting. Others are concerned the administration could use it to build a national registration database and effectively take control of election administration — or to target people based on their political affiliation. And some warn that DOJ simply doesn’t have the systems in place to securely store voter information from all 50 states — raising the threat of a massive data breach.
“There is no legitimate purpose for trying to obtain this data,” said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former trial attorney in DOJ’s voting section. “There is no way this data could be useful to them if they were operating in good faith. There is no legal basis for obtaining this data.”
“So it does make me wonder — and I know the states are wondering,” Becker added, “what is the purpose behind this?”
Justifying their conspiracy theories
Throughout 2024, Donald Trump and his allies leaned heavily on the false narrative of noncitizen voting. Trump also used it as the prime justification for his failed plot to overturn the 2020 election.
Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read (D) said he worries that if DOJ now gets its hands on state voter data, it might use it to bolster that false narrative, making it easier for the administration to suppress voting and other political activity it doesn’t like.
“Ultimately, I think really what they’re trying to do is find the data — even though it doesn’t exist — to justify their conspiracy theories,” Read said. “and get back to things that make it harder for people to hold this administration accountable.
Becker agrees.
“Many states have told me that they’re concerned that the federal government is going to use their possession of this data to make false claims about the state of voter lists,” Becker said,
“We know the problem of noncitizen registration and voting is a very, very small one, but we also know that there are those who will mischaracterize the evidence, who will spread false claims about that on social media and elsewhere,” Becker continued. “And I think many states are worried that those grifters now have allies at the DOJ and DHS who are going to help spread those false claims, and that even just the mere possession of this data might amplify those claims.”
Becker pointed to Texas. Last year, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) claimed that the state identified 6,500 noncitizens on its voter rolls — but an investigation found that the true number was only 581, of which only 33 alleged noncitizens were referred to prosecutors for illegal voting.
“A national voter registration database”
Another secretary of state, Maine’s Shenna Bellows (D), has a slightly different fear — though she’s fully aware it might make her sound like something of a conspiracy theorist.
“The Trump administration seems to be trying to take over election administration” Bellows told Democracy Docket. “They seem to be trying to create a national voter registration database, given that they are asking all 50 states for sensitive personal voter information.”
Of course, the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives states the power to administer elections, despite President Donald Trump’s false assertion that he runs them.
But a single national database of every registered voter, containing their party affiliation, address and social security number, Bellows argues, could still be shared between different sections of the DOJ, or even with different Trump administration agencies.
“Imagine if DOJ could look up to see if someone is a Democrat or Republican prior to investigating or prosecuting them for tax fraud or other crimes?” she said.
Dax Goldstein, the Election Protection Program Director at the States United Democracy Center, echoes Bellows’ concern.
“I do think that the DOJ’s ability to share data both within the federal government and even within different branches of the Department of Justice itself is especially concerning given what we’ve seen from the department and the administration so far,” they said.
That fear is not farfetched: Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), has weaponized the agency to lodge mortgage fraud allegations against the president’s political enemies — including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook — using information obtained from government records. The DOJ has reportedly opened mortgage fraud investigations into both Cook and James.
“It’s literally everything that you would need to steal someone’s identity”
State election leaders and voting rights experts also worry ithe Justice Department simply isn’t equipped to receive and store all of that data — and that’s a major security risk.
“I’d be very concerned about breaches of that data, and whether or not state officials who hand that data over to federal officials might be liable if that data is later breached, because there are very strong protections on this data,” said Becker, who founded and built the Electronic Registration Information Center, a widely praised system for states to securely share data with each other.
Goldstein agreed about the danger of a data breach.
“It’s literally everything that you would need to steal someone’s identity,” they said. “They’re just asking states to trust them and hand over information sufficient to steal every registered voter’s identity. That would be bad enough if we had no reason to distrust them, but you pair that with their lack of independence, and it really is quite worrying.”
The Trump administration has already demonstrated that it is ill-equipped to properly handle large amounts of sensitive government data. A whistleblower disclosure detailed that, back in March, employees with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mishandled sensitive labor data.
And DOJ has already shown it may not be equipped to handle the sensitive data it’s requesting from states. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) recently said her office was delayed in delivering the requested voter records to the department because DOJ officials did not explain how to securely transfer them.
“The lack of sophistication that they’ve shown around how to protect private information is really pretty astonishing,” Goldstein said. “And that’s true for DHS, too. They don’t have a secure system for sending over voter data.”