DOJ Sent Its Latest Demand For Voter Data to the Wrong Person 

Criminal prosecutors in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently sent an email to Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski (D) requesting sensitive election data to help implement President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order and hunt for voter fraud. 

Just one problem: The email went to the wrong state official. Unlike most secretaries of state, Godlewski does not oversee Wisconsin’s elections, which are run by the state’s elections commission. 

Still, her office slammed the email as part of “a coordinated and cynical witch hunt about the 2020 election.”

It’s not the first time the DOJ has sought sensitive voter data from Wisconsin. The department also previously threatened to withhold funding to the state for allegedly violating federal voter laws concerning a complaints process.

The farcical error is one of numerous recent examples of sloppiness by the department in recent months, as it has launched a sweeping effort to pressure states to hand over voter data that might show evidence of illegal voting.

“I’m not gonna swear there’s never been a typo in a DOJ letter before. But this is a rash of typographical sloppiness complementing the legal sloppiness,” Justin Levitt, a constitutional law scholar and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights division, recently noted on Bluesky, highlighting typos in four recent DOJ letters to states. 

Over the past several weeks, attorneys from both the DOJ’s criminal division and the voting section have reached out to at least a dozen states to demand a variety of sensitive voter data — including access to voter registration rolls — and have made requests to meet with election officials for a potential “information-sharing agreement.” 

In some instances, the DOJ requested access to information that is already publicly available — another example of the “sloppiness” Levitt mentioned.

The email to Godlewski, sent July 10, is identical to one sent on the same day to Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D). Several other Democratic secretaries of states reportedly received similar emails from the DOJ’s criminal division. 

The email — sent by Scott Laragy, principal deputy director for the executive office for United States attorneys, and Paul Hayden, senior counsel in the DOJ’s criminal division — asked for information “on, among other things, individuals who have registered to vote or have voted in your state despite being ineligible to vote, who may have committed other forms of election fraud, who may have provided false information to state authorities on voter registration or other election forms, or who may otherwise have engaged in unlawful conduct relevant to the election process.”

“It’s our understanding that letters went out to all Democratic Secretaries of State as part of a coordinated and cynical witch hunt about the 2020 election that will hinder or hurt our hardworking local election officials,” Nate Schwantes, a spokesperson for Godlewski’s office,  told Democracy Docket.

Asked whether the office planned to respond to the email, Schwantes declined to comment.