DOJ requests for voter data raise concerns among election law experts

The agency has asked states for voter rolls, information on election crimes and procedures for checking voter eligibility, among other records.

By CARTER WALKER and JEN FIFIELD
Votebeat

The U.S. Department of Justice has unnerved some state election officials by issuing sweeping requests for information that it says is pertinent to enforcing federal election laws and investigating voting crimes, which President Donald Trump has identified as priorities.

In letters sent to at least a dozen states over the past two months, according to documents obtained by Votebeat and reported elsewhere, the department asked for varied sets of data and records, including voter rolls, information on potential election and voting crimes, data from past elections, and details about procedures for maintaining voter lists and checking voters’ eligibility.

State officials say privately that they have been struck by the scope of the requests and uncertainty around what the administration plans to do with the information, and have been talking to one another about them.

Many of these officials have faced years of near-constant scrutiny as Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of election malfeasance, and the president has tried to use his influence and official authority to rewrite the history of his 2020 election loss.

While the requests so far are mostly for data or procedures that are public information or accessible by law to the Justice Department, election law experts said, some of them were more questionable.

Bryan Sells, a voting rights lawyer who worked at the Justice Department during the Obama administration, said federal law has long given the department the right to access some state data related to voter registrations, and it’s not uncommon or improper for it to use that power.

“But I think the question I had after reading these emails is whether what they’re really looking for goes beyond what Congress allowed for,” he said.

For example, the Justice Department sent Michigan and Arizona officials emails asking for information on “individuals who have registered to vote or have voted in your state despite being ineligible to vote.” That request arguably falls within the department’s purview, Sells said. But a request for information on people “who may otherwise have engaged in unlawful conduct relevant to the election process” is broad and might not be.

Kory Langhofer, a Republican lawyer who has been counsel for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign in Arizona, said that it’s fair to be cautious, or even skeptical of broad data requests from the federal government.

But Langhofer said, “I don’t think it’s reasonable to say the sky is falling, because the information requested here is already in the hands of both the state and federal governments,” if not necessarily the Justice Department specifically.

President’s executive order stressed election law enforcement

The information requests are another example of the Justice Department’s shift in enforcement priorities under the Trump administration toward finding and prosecuting election crimes, something the president explicitly called on the attorney general to do in a March executive order on elections.

Federal courts have blocked key provisions of the order from going into effect, but the Justice Department and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission have begun taking steps to implement some other provisions that are still in force.

That appears to be the goal of a recent round of Justice Department correspondence to key swing states including Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. In emails obtained by Votebeat, the department asks for a call with a goal of setting up an agreement to share information on election crimes such as individuals providing false information on registration forms or registering to vote when they are ineligible.

“With your cooperation, we plan to use this information to enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in at least two such emails.

Trump’s executive order instructs the Justice Department to attempt to establish such information-sharing agreements with states, and orders it to “prioritize enforcement of Federal election integrity laws” in any state that declines to do so, as well as consider withholding federal grants to such states.

The Justice Department declined to comment for this story.

Michigan’s Department of State said it is reviewing the request. Officials in Pennsylvania said they met with Justice Department officials and that “the discussion was consistent with our longstanding cooperation with our federal partners to protect the integrity of elections.”

JP Martin, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, said the office is “dealing with DOJ in a good faith manner while ensuring we are following the letter of federal and state laws.”

States receive requests for voter rolls

Meanwhile, several states are receiving Justice Department requests for their voter rolls, and information about voter roll cleaning. They include Wisconsin, where the department asked in June for a copy of its voter rolls, along with responses to several questions about voter registration activities, in response to complaints the department said it had received about possible violations of federal voting law. Eight other states received similar requests, the Washington Post reported.

Wisconsin election officials directed the department to an online portal where the public version of the voter rolls could be purchased for $12,500.

Trump’s executive order also directs the Homeland Security Department to review “publicly available” versions of the voter lists “alongside Federal immigration databases … for consistency with Federal requirements.”

The DOJ requests are presumably an attempt to “gather all the relevant data in one place, conduct an authoritative study, and put these issues to rest,” Langhofer said, referring to questions Republicans have repeatedly raised about whether ineligible voters are casting ballots.

“It is important to know that our voters are citizens and residents, and are not voting in more than one jurisdiction,” he said in a text message. “If there is a problem in one of those areas, we should fix it — and if there is *not* a problem there, people should know that our system works well.”

But election officials appear to be concerned, said David Becker, an election lawyer who previously worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and now leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

The recent communications from the department are “odd at the least, and it is an intentional rebalancing of the federal- state dynamic at worst,” Becker said.

Earlier this week, in response to calls from election officials about the Justice Department’s requests, Becker hosted a conference call that was attended by more than 350 state and local election officials from 33 states, which he said is a reflection of the anxiety about possible federal overreach.

Becker noted that the letters followed a series of aggressive administration actions on elections since Trump returned to office, including a lawsuit against Orange County, California, over access to voter data, and a presidential directive demanding an investigation into Chris Krebs, the nation’s former top cybersecurity official. Krebs angered Trump in 2020 by contradicting his assertion that his election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.

“All of these seem designed not to create a viable election policy, but to lay the groundwork to claim the 2026 and 2028 elections are stolen, just as the president did with the 2020 and 2022 elections,” Becker said. “And the troubling part is, it seems now the White House is prepared to use the full weight of the government to spread those claims.”

Votebeat reporters Hayley Harding and Alexander Shur contributed to this report.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat. org. Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

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