President Trump’s Justice Department is doubling down on its months-long crusade to access sensitive voter information from red and blue states across the country. As it currently stands, the DOJ is suing 30 states — both Republican and Democrat alike — who have refused to succumb to the department’s unprecedented demands for voter roll data.
On Thursday, the DOJ filed lawsuits against five more states, four of them red states, whose officials have refused to comply with the department’s order. This most recent batch of lawsuits target New Jersey, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Utah and Kentucky. Despite these new legal challenges, state officials, by and large, are continuing to stand firm against the administration’s demands.
For months now, Trump’s Justice Department has been demanding sensitive voter information, including drivers license and social security numbers, from at least 44 states and Washington, D.C. The majority of these states, including the five sued on Tuesday, have refused to comply with the demand and have called out the federal government for trying to seize information it is simply not entitled to.
The DOJ is relying on provisions from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) as the basis for its lawsuits. None of these provisions, however, give the federal government the authority to demand this type of protected personal identifying information, as experts have told TPM.
It’s not clear why the DOJ is trying to access this information. Election experts have previously told TPM that the entire campaign appears to be an effort to sow seeds of doubt in states’ election systems and an attempt to exert control over election administration — something the federal government does not have the constitutional authority to manage.
The Trump DOJ has painted its requests for voter rolls as some sort of election integrity effort. It is just one layer of Trump’s campaign to continue to spread lies about the country’s election security, as he threatens to somehow “nationalize” voting ahead of the midterms.
“Accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Thursday, addressing the five new lawsuits. “This latest series of litigation underscores that This Department of Justice is fulfilling its duty to ensure transparency, voter roll maintenance, and secure elections across the country.”
In response, secretaries of state and state election officials have pushed back on these demands and the subsequent legal challenges.
“Kentucky’s elections are a national success story, and the Department of Justice has repeatedly acknowledged in court our successful work to clean up the dirty voter rolls I inherited,” Kentucky’s Republican Secretary of State Michael Adam told TPM. “Kentucky law protects voters’ personal information, and I will not voluntarily commit a data breach by providing Kentuckians’ personal data to the federal bureaucracy unless a court order tells me to.”
Republican Mike Queen, West Virginia’s deputy secretary of state, similarly said the state would not cave to Bondi’s demands. West Virginia’s Secretary of State Kris Warner is a Republican as well.
“The media reports that came out late Thursday afternoon are the first we’ve heard or seen of a lawsuit naming the state of West Virginia. We have not been served. Regardless, I think Secretary Warner’s earlier comments to the DOJ were pretty clear. The federal government is not going to get any personal information on West Virginia voters as long as Kris Warner is Secretary of State,” he said.
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport called the DOJ’s lawsuit “baseless” in a statement to TPM.
“We are committed to protecting the privacy of our state’s residents, and we will defend against this lawsuit in court,” Davenport added.
And in a statement on X on Thursday, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre M. Henderson, emphasized that the DOJ is not entitled to the information it is demanding.
“Neither state nor federal law entitles the Department of Justice to collect private information on law-abiding American citizens. Utahns can be assured that my office will always follow the Constitution and the law, protect voters’ rights, and administer free and fair elections.”
Although the DOJ’s campaign has faced pushback from both state election officials and, in some cases, the courts, the DOJ does not appear to be backing down. So far, federal courts have dismissed the department’s lawsuits in Oregon, California, and Michigan. The DOJ has appealed these decisions.
