Trump DOJ Sues Massachusetts and Nevada In Expanding Bid to Seize States’ Private Voter Data
Massachusetts and Nevada are the latest states sued by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) over their refusal to hand over unredacted voter rolls to the Trump administration, the department announced Friday.
The DOJ has now sued a total of 18 states, escalating its effort to seize private voter data for every state — including individual voters’ addresses, driver’s license numbers, and last four digits of their social security numbers.
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
But the states who have so far refused to hand over their unredacted voter rolls — including both Democratic- and Republican-led states — said that DOJ does not have the legal authority to obtain the data it’s demanding. And state election leaders have warned that the Trump administration’s unprecedented effort to collect sensitive data from every state threatens both voter privacy and the constitutional authority of states to run elections.
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“This lawsuit is simply another example of the Trump Department of Justice’s campaign to intimidate states into handing over the personal information of their voters to the federal government,” Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin (D) said in a statement to Democracy Docket. “DOJ has provided no meaningful justification for needing access to every Massachusetts voter’s personally identifiable information.”
Galvin added that he has “absolutely no intention of handing over the names, addresses, dates of birth, political party affiliation, phone numbers, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers of our voters to an administration that has demonstrated a pattern of using citizens’ private information to go on outrageous fishing expeditions in an attempt to settle petty grievances.”
Kerry Durmick, the state director for All Voting is Local Nevada, said that the “lawsuit is clearly aimed at weaponizing voter data against the President’s perceived political enemies instead of what really matters – protecting free and fair elections.”
“Full access to unredacted voter data will not only violate privacy laws but also enable large-scale voter challenges, false claims of fraud, and new attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship and other burdensome requirements that could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters nationwide, including hundreds of thousands of Nevadans,” Durmick added. “These tactics have long been used to suppress participation, particularly among communities of color, students, and working-class voters.”
The lawsuits against Massachusetts and Nevada come on the heels of nearly identical lawsuits filed Thursday against Colorado and Hawaii. In each lawsuit, DOJ cites a rarely cited provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 that gives the Attorney General “sweeping” authority to seize election records for “inspection, reproduction, and copying.”
“We will not hand over Coloradans’ sensitive voting information to Donald Trump,” Colorado Attorney General Jena Griswold (D) said in a statement Thursday. “He does not have a legal right to the information. I will continue to protect our elections and democracy, and look forward to winning this case.”
A spokesperson for Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dhillon said on a podcast appearance with conservative commentator Scott Jennings that state election leaders shouldn’t be concerned about handing over their voters’ private data since the federal government has it anyway.
“I’m asking for the last four [digits] of people’s social [security number], which by the way the federal government issued that number, so we kind of have it,” Dhillon said. “The cat is out of the bag on their social security number. It’s not secret from the federal government. It’s just dumb.”
Dhillon also warned that more lawsuits are on the way, including one against Georgia, who refused to hand over unredacted voter rolls to DOJ.
“Some of the states that have said no include Maine and just this week Georgia,” Dhillon said. “Georgia, the Secretary of State Raffensperger has told me to go play in traffic, effectively, so we’re going to be suing Georgia.”
This story has been updated with comment from Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin.