The Justice Department is waging a multistate legal campaign to compel voter registration data from across the country, claiming it needs the information to assess whether states maintain adequate election systems. The effort has fractured along predictable lines, with Republican-led states resisting and Democratic-leaning ones mostly refusing, while federal judges in multiple jurisdictions have expressed skepticism about the whole operation.
The DOJ began requesting voter registration lists from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., citing a March 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump that directs the attorney general to ensure compliance with voter registration laws. When states declined to cooperate, the department sued, now pursuing active litigation in roughly two dozen jurisdictions from coast to coast.
The data the government is seeking goes deep. Under proposed confidentiality agreements, states would hand over voter names, dates of birth, home addresses, driver's license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. The DOJ says it would use this information to identify any registration list problems, then report back to state officials.
The campaign has met resistance in unexpected quarters. Six Republican-leaning states have refused to turn over their data: Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia. Several other states, including Iowa, Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee, provided data but declined to sign the DOJ's confidentiality agreements.
Federal courts have not been kind to the government's position. Seven judges across seven states have dismissed the DOJ's cases entirely. One federal judge in Rhode Island characterized the effort as a "fishing expedition." The Justice Department has appealed three of those dismissals and continues pressing cases in Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Hawaii and New Jersey.
The government scored a rare victory in Oklahoma, where the state agreed to provide voter data in exchange for dismissing the lawsuit. North Carolina's State Board of Elections also reached a settlement with the DOJ. Two other states settled differently: Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, Alaska, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Kansas and Montana have willingly provided the information without litigation.
The legal battle comes as Trump continues to promote false claims about the 2020 election and widespread voter fraud, despite members of his own administration acknowledging there was no evidence to support those assertions. The president has suggested Republicans should nationalize elections, a move that would violate the Constitution. States have long run their own elections and maintained their own voter databases. No national voter database exists, and the federal government does not oversee U.S. elections.
The DOJ's approach is unprecedented in scope. The department has sought election information from states before, but never attempted to collect voter registration databases from so many jurisdictions simultaneously.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "What the DOJ is framing as election security oversight looks a lot like a federal power grab, and the courts are beginning to see it that way too."
Comments