The Department of Justice is suing six additional states to compel them to share their statewide voter registration lists with the federal government, an unusual request that has drawn pushback from election officials in both parties in the past.
DOJ’s Civil Rights Division filed federal lawsuits Thursday against election officials in California, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Hampshire claiming the states violated federal law by refusing to share voter rolls with the Trump administration.
Access to voting rolls varies state by state, but the rolls are generally released to the public and government agencies with voters’ private data — like driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers — redacted.
The DOJ’s lawsuits demand the rolls with that data included. Similar requests have been rebuffed by election officials across the country, both recently and in past years, out of privacy concerns and opposition to federal encroachment in state elections. Some officials have also tied the effort to President Donald Trump’s long history of spreading election misinformation, including falsely accusing states of allowing noncitizen immigrants to vote en masse.
Last week, the DOJ filed similar lawsuits against election officials in Maine and Oregon, prompting sharp rebukes from each state’s top elections official.
“This is not normal,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said in a statement last week. “Trump’s DOJ is using its immense federal power to try to intimidate us into turning over protected voter data and changing our voting processes to fit President Trump’s whims.”
Michigan, Minnesota and California have Democrats as their secretaries of state, while New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have Republican chief election officials. New York has a state board of elections. Spokespeople for all six election authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuits.
The lawsuits demand states to share highly sensitive information on voters, including Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers, as part of the administration’s effort to create “clean voter rolls.”
“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”
The Trump administration appears to be prioritizing access to the private information of voters. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sanctioned the release of some voter roll data to DOJ after multiple requests but did not include any personally identifying information on voters.
In March, Trump signed an executive order directing DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security to take measures preventing noncitizens from voting in elections — a baseless claim that Trump has touted for years, including ahead of the 2024 election and in his attempts to delegitimize the results of the 2020 election.
DOJ has sent requests for voter rolls to over 30 states, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal think tank and advocacy organization.
Trump explored a similar measure during his first term. He established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017 to examine cases of voter fraud.
The commission’s request for private voter information was met with opposition from state officials in both parties before it was dissolved the following year, with a then-Republican secretary of state telling the commission to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico” in response to broad requests.
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