DOJ said Vermont was violating federal voting laws. Asked for evidence, it couldn’t provide any

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted it has no evidence that Vermont is not complying with federal voter roll maintenance laws — an admission that could further weaken its case for amassing voters’ sensitive data.

The admission came in a federal court hearing Tuesday in the Department of Justice’s lawsuit seeking to compel Vermont to turn over its full, unredacted statewide voter registration list. Much of the argument focused on whether the DOJ has articulated a legally sufficient basis for its demand.

The Civil Rights Act authorizes DOJ to request state voter records to assess compliance with federal election laws. But it requires that DOJ provide both a “basis” and a “purpose” for its request. 

A legitimate basis means, essentially, a reason to believe that a state may be violating voting laws.

“Does the government have any evidence at all…to suggest that Vermont is not compliant with HAVA or the Voting Rights Act?,” asked U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Lanthier, an appointee of President Joe Biden. 

“Well, we’re still in the investigatory phase, so that’s what we would be looking at when we look at the statewide voter registration list,” DOJ attorney Brittany Bennett responded.

Vermont noted that DOJ’s letter demanding the voter rolls did not identify any specific concerns or documented deficiencies in the state’s voter list maintenance practices. Nor did it give reasons why the state’s existing efforts may be unreasonable under the National Voter Registration Act.

The hearing comes less than a week after a federal judge dismissed a similar DOJ lawsuit against Massachusetts on comparable grounds. In that case, the court found the DOJ’s request legally deficient under the Civil Rights Act, writing that the Attorney General’s demand “offered no basis—none—and the demand was therefore facially inadequate.”

In response to that ruling, the DOJ has begun asking other courts for a do-over — allowing it to revise its initial demand letters rather than risk dismissal on the same grounds. 

In new filings submitted today in related cases in Rhode Island and Georgia, the DOJ argued that if courts agree with the reasoning adopted in the Massachusetts decision, they should permit the agency to issue a supplemental letter curing any deficiencies “rather than dismiss on the merits to avoid unnecessary delay in resolution of the underlying legal issues.”

The federal court in the Vermont case has not yet issued a ruling.