'Abuse of Power': Trump DOJ Attack on State Voter Rolls Decried as Threat to Democracy

With the US Department of Justice's latest demand for the personal information of millions of voters in six states, one voting rights advocate said Thursday, the DOJ is "harassing election officials" as part of a relentless effort to use voters as "pawns."

The Trump administration filed federal lawsuits against officials in California, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and New Hampshire after the states refused to hand over statewide voter rolls including people's personal data such as their driver's license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Civil Rights Division's request for the data is part of an effort to create "clean voter rolls"—"the foundation of free and fair elections," according to Bondi—but rights advocates maintain the Trump administration is simply intensifying its perennial push to spread misinformation about so-called "voter fraud," including by promoting the baseless claim that noncitizens are permitted to vote in elections.

"Voters are not pawns in a political game, and the commonwealth will not be bullied into handing over its voter rolls to an authoritarian government that is hell-bent on sowing doubt into our elections for its own gain," said Deborah Hinchey, Pennsylvania state director of All Voting is Local.

The DOJ has made requests to more than 30 states for voter rolls that include driver's license and Social Security information, which is not included on publicly available lists of voters to protect privacy. The Trump administration has said all 50 states will receive requests for the information.

The lawsuits filed Thursday follow two that were filed last week against Oregon and Maine, which also rebuffed the requests earlier.

“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.”

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said in response to the lawsuit that the administration should "go jump in the Gulf of Maine"—echoing then-Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, who told the first Trump administration to "go jump in the Gulf of Mexico" in 2017 when it requested private voter data.

“This is not normal,” Bellows said last week, accusing President Donald Trump's DOJ of "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.”

Trump signed an executive order in March directing the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security to take steps to prevent noncitizens from voting—which the Brennan Center for Justice said in an analysis is "vanishingly rare," and which is illegal under federal law, with states already having "multiple checks in place to ensure that only eligible citizens can vote."

Al Schmidt, the secretary of state for Pennsylvania, responded to the lawsuit by saying he would continue to "aggressively defend" the privacy of voters in his state.

"The Justice Department’s demand for voters’ personal information, including driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers, is unprecedented and unlawful, and we will vigorously fight the federal government’s overreach in court,” Schmidt said in a statement.

Ashiya Brown, Michigan state director for All Voting Is Local, said the lawsuits represent "an abuse of power from the Trump administration to further election lies and undermine trust in the voting process."

"This is an overstepping of this administration’s authority without being clear about its intentions and plans. This isn’t normal. It isn’t their place,” said Brown. "The Department of Justice’s efforts to bully state election officials to compromise sensitive voter data like addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers are a threat to the very democratic principles of free and fair elections."