DOJ ends winless in voter roll crusade after final district court rejects bid to obtain Delaware’s list

The Department of Justice (DOJ) suffered the latest stinging rebuke in its fruitless quest for states’ unredacted voter rolls after a federal court in Delaware handed the Trump administration its 28th straight loss.

The loss is the latest in a string of judicial rebukes to the Trump administration’s efforts to interfere with states’ constitutional authority to administer elections. 

It’s the last of DOJ’s lawsuits to be ruled on, with the department winning none of them. Cases against Hawaii and Idaho are stayed pending a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Delaware defeat follows last week’s blue wave election where Democrats flipped seats in deep-red states across the country, including Texas, North Carolina and Georgia. The Trump administration had made unfounded allegations of widespread voting by noncitizens a central theme of its election efforts and had demanded state voter rolls in an effort to prove noncitizens were registered to vote.

Every single federal district court that has ruled on the issue, and one appeals court, has rejected the DOJ’s argument that it is entitled to states’ voter logs – which contain sensitive personal information such as Social Security numbers – under the Civil Rights Act’s record-keeping provisions. 

U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews reached the same conclusion.

“I agree with the Sixth Circuit and other district courts that have determined that reading the demand provision of Title III to apply to documents received from third-party sources, rather than internally created documents, prevents conflicts between” the Civil Rights Act and other voting measures like the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act, wrote Andrews, an appointee of President Barack Obama.