DOJ asks court to let it continue its voter roll purging program despite block

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal district court Friday night to allow it to continue collecting state voter roll data and comparing it against federal databases to identify alleged instances of noncitizens registering or voting. 

The U.S. District Court of D.C. already blocked such actions – identified in court proceedings as the “DOJ Voter List Maintenance Policy” – on October 9. But DOJ is asking the court to pause that ruling as it prepares an appeal. 

The policy is part of a campaign that DOJ has carried out for more than a year to obtain state voter roll data, as President Donald Trump aims to take control of elections.

“The Department of Justice and Attorney General Blanche respectfully move for a stay pending appeal of this Court’s order vacating the alleged ‘DOJ Voter List Maintenance Policy,’” the filing reads. “There is no such policy. By concluding otherwise, the Court’s decision has hamstrung DOJ’s ability to enforce the election laws that Congress has empowered it to enforce. DOJ must be allowed to enforce those statutes given Congress’s express instruction to do so and the continuing need for election oversight.”

Those statutes include the Civil Rights Act, which the Justice Department claims the court “incorrectly” ruled did not allow it to collect voter data from states. It’s an argument that it has unsuccessfully tried in dozens of court cases. DOJ has lost 26 court cases in which it has sued states for their unredacted voter rolls, winning zero. 

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan on October 9 blocked DOJ from collecting state voter data and running it through the Department of Homeland Security’s flawed SAVE database. It is a nationwide moratorium that stops DOJ from even using voter roll information that some states voluntarily submitted.

“DOJ cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws that were carefully crafted to protect the rights of the American people,” Sooknanan wrote.

In Friday’s filing, DOJ claimed that its list maintenance shouldn’t be considered “final agency actions” – which would mean they are reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act – because states weren’t legally mandated to comply with its requests for their data. 

“States had the option to provide the requested information; many did, many did not,” the DOJ’s filing reads. “And contrary to the Court’s conclusion, ‘each’ letter was not ‘phrased in mandatory language,’ but rather as requests for States to ‘please’ provide information. In that sense, DOJ’s letters did not ‘require anyone to do anything[,]’ a hallmark of non-final agency action.”

The district court found that the requests were mandatory due to the DOJ’s threats of legal consequences in its request letters. Indeed, DOJ followed through and sued 30 states plus Washington, D.C. for refusing to provide the data.

Meanwhile, in California, the Justice Department has threatened election officials with criminal exposure if they don’t purge voters it has identified as noncitizens, though under spurious circumstances.