Election Officials Have Been Under Attack For Years. Now The DOJ Wants to Criminally Charge Them

In recent months, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sent letters to states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, and Colorado, pressing for information about voter roll management, demanding to see state voter rolls, and threatening to sue over alleged voting law violations.

But the department’s campaign has gone much further. Criminal prosecutors at DOJ sent separate broad requests for information to election officials in at least two states, people who have seen the requests told Democracy Docket. 

Those letters were first reported by the New York Times, which added that they’re part of a broader initiative at DOJ, still in its early stages, to look into whether it can bring criminal charges against election officials for not doing enough to protect their voting systems against fraud and illegal voting. 

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The effort appears to be propelled by the election denial movement that emerged from the cascade of conspiracy theories about election fraud promoted by President Donald Trump and his followers in the aftermath of the 2020 election. But, experts say, it could have a major impact on next year’s election, too, by further undermining voter trust, and by intimidating election officials into taking steps that reduce voter access in the name of security, or to quit the field entirely.

It’s no secret that political violence has been trending higher in the past decade and, along with it, a rise in threats and harassment against election officials and workers. Along with dwindling budgets and resources, it’s led to a high turnover of election workers between 2000 and 2024, according to a recent report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. 

In a survey of local election officials released Thursday by the Brennan Center, 59% of respondents said they worry about political leaders interfering with how election officials do their jobs.  Forty-six percent of respondents said they are concerned about politically motivated investigations of election officials.

But the DOJ’s recent increased scrutiny on how certain states manage their elections and voter registration — along with the added threat of possible criminal charges for not complying with arbitrary standards set by the Trump administration — could make things worse, advocates fear. 

“All that harassment has been fueled by the election denial movement,” Dax Goldstein, the Election Protection Program Director at the States United Democracy Center, told Democracy Docket. “Now the same election lies and conspiracy theories that fueled that movement are coming directly from the DOJ, with the full weight of the federal government behind them. And that is going to be really harmful, both to voters’ trust in our election system, and to our election officials.” 

“We can expect it to supercharge the kind of abuse that they’ve already been dealing with for years now,“ Goldstein added. “With profound effects on their health and safety.”

“Local election officials already operate under intense scrutiny, with significant responsibilities and limited resources,” said Carolina Lopez, the executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions. “Discussions about accountability must be matched with needed support — especially in the form of funding, guidance, and access to trusted cybersecurity expertise.”

Former DOJ staffers, too, are deeply troubled by the department’s interest in criminal charges for the people who run elections.

“This is yet another example of the DOJ weaponizing its investigative and prosecutorial powers in service of the President’s political agenda,” Stacey Young, the founder of Justice Connection and a former longtime attorney in the DOJ’s civil rights division, told Democracy Docket. 

“We know that these election fraud issues resonate with the President’s base. And using the DOJ in furtherance of pursuing that fiction would just be an egregious example of weaponization.”

David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former trial attorney in the DOJ’s voting section, said on BlueSky that the DOJ’s “doomed and twisted effort seems part of a larger scheme to sow distrust in upcoming elections.”

“They seem to be doing this instead of enforcing a range of voting rights laws, including the Voting Rights Act, in lieu of making sure that access to the voting booth is protected, and making sure that people’s votes matter,” Young added.

“That’s the kind of work DOJ has traditionally done, and the work that Congress intended for it to do by passing voting rights laws. This is just a perversion of the statutory scheme Congress devised, and the role the DOJ is supposed to play in securing American’s right to vote.”