Democratic senators accuse Trump DOJ of ‘apparent ransom’ in push to seize state voter rolls

Senate Democrats condemned the Trump administration for crossing a dangerous new line in its effort to seize state voter rolls, warning that the Justice Department is now using coercion and intimidation after courts rejected its legal claims.

In a blistering letter sent Wednesday, Senate Democrats accused the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) of running an unlawful pressure campaign to centralize voter registration data nationwide, despite recent court losses and without clear authorization from Congress.

The letter follows reports that Attorney General Pam Bondi sought Minnesota’s voter rolls while signaling the administration could withdraw federal immigration enforcement operations from the state — an episode Democrats describe as a dangerous new escalation in the administration’s assault on election integrity.

“We write to urge the Department of Justice to stop its intensifying pressure campaign to coerce states into handing over their voter rolls,” the senators wrote. “We strongly oppose the Department’s lawsuits against states, which are unauthorized attempts to centralize this data, that in addition to posing serious risks to voter privacy, data security, and national security, also invite unwarranted voter roll purges and undermine state and local election officials’ list maintenance efforts.”

The letter, led by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), was signed by 26 Democratic and independent senators, many of whom represent states currently being sued by DOJ. It comes just days after federal courts in California and Oregon rejected the department’s demands for unredacted voter registration lists, warning that DOJ’s legal theory stretches federal law far beyond its purpose.

“The unauthorized nature of these lawsuits was exposed by your January 24 letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz seeking voter rolls as a condition to ending the dangerous recent deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP),” the senators added. “This letter marked an unacceptable escalation of DOJ’s campaign to centralize state voter rolls and sensitive personal information under its control.”

The senators went further, accusing DOJ of abandoning legal arguments altogether in favor of coercion.

“It is also the clearest admission that the Department knows it lacks authority to obtain state voter rolls and is instead resorting to strong arm tactics and intimidation by force,” they wrote. “The whole country now sees this pursuit of state voter rolls for what it is, nothing more than an ‘apparent ransom.’”

DOJ has now sued 24 states and Washington, D.C., seeking full voter registration lists that include personally identifiable information. At least two of those cases were dismissed entirely and at least eight states have already turned over complete voter files, giving the federal government access to data on millions of voters.

“While most states are resisting this illegal voter roll grab, we are gravely concerned by the amount of sensitive data the Department has already amassed on millions of American voters,” the letter read. “The Department has failed to provide Congress, or the public, any information on how it is maintaining this vast amount of data, the guardrails in place to protect state voter information, how the data is to be used or who in the federal government has access to this sensitive data.”

Democrats also directly challenged the administration’s justification that it is combating noncitizen voting, pointing to its own data showing the claim is vanishingly rare. After Texas ran more than 18 million voter registrations through a federal citizenship database, only 33 people were referred for possible investigation.

Despite that, the senators warned that DOJ’s push to run voter rolls through the same database could wrongly flag eligible voters, especially naturalized citizens, and lead to wrongful removals from the rolls.

The letter demands that DOJ answer a sweeping set of oversight questions, including how voter data is stored, whether it has been shared with other agencies or outside groups and whether DOJ has complied with federal privacy and cybersecurity laws. The senators also asked whether the department has investigated potential criminal liability after courts found DOJ failed to meet basic Privacy Act requirements.

DOJ has not publicly responded to the letter. The senators gave the department a deadline of Feb. 12 to provide written answers and requested an in-person briefing next month.

The Senate letter comes as state attorneys general mounted their own resistance the same day. 

New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 22 attorneys general denouncing Bondi’s demand letter to Minnesota as an “after-the-fact attempt to justify a highly concerning federal operation” and accusing the administration of “attempting through force what it cannot achieve through the courts.”