Sugar Maple Square poll in Bowling Green, Kentucky on Primary Election Day, May 21, 2024 (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)
The Justice Department’s stated reason for obtaining sensitive personal information about millions of voters masks the Trump administration’s true intention to obtain state voter rolls, Michigan’s top elections official said Monday in a federal appeals court.
Attorneys for Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson filed charges in: compact in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The argument reflects a widespread concern among Democratic state election officials that the Trump administration wants to collect voter data trying to influence upcoming mid-term elections.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is suing 29 states for refusing to turn over voter information. It says it needs the data to evaluate efforts to organize and maintain voter rolls, including to check whether non-citizens are registered to vote.
However, from Benson’s position, it “seems to be a pretext for the wrong purposes.”
Michigan and other states say the Trump administration is instead effectively creating a nationwide list of registered voters – a move prohibited under the Civil Rights Act of 1960, a federal law aimed at combating voting discrimination that is invoked by the Justice Department in states that require the submission of voter data.
“Collecting Michigan voter data for the purpose of maintaining its own voter rolls and using Michigan’s rolls in building a nationwide voter file falls outside the scope of the purpose stated in the Department of Justice’s request, which is simply to ‘ensure that Michigan complies with the list maintenance requirements’ of federal election law, Benson states.
“Furthermore, the creation of a national voter file of U.S. citizens goes beyond any purpose provided for in the (Civil Rights Act).”
According to U.S. District Court Judge Hala Jarbou ruled in February that the Justice Department was not entitled to Michigan’s unredacted voter rolls containing driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers, the department appealed to the 6th Circuit.
Trump’s priority
Over the past year, Trump has tried to exert more power over federal elections, which are administered by states under the U.S. Constitution.
“Trump does not have the authority to create Trump’s voter rolls,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat who is being sued by the Justice Department for failing to provide voter records, said in an interview earlier this month.
Studies have shown that foreign voting is extremely scarce, although Trump has long focused on the prospect of foreign voting and other forms of voter fraud. Last year, Trump signed an executive order that would unilaterally require voters to provide proof of citizenship. The order was overturned in court, but Trump is pushing the US Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which would introduce similar proof of citizenship rules.
Michigan officials and other critics of the Justice Department’s efforts to collect voter data point to Trump’s actions and comments from a Justice Department lawyer as evidence that the Trump administration is already compiling a national voter roll.
Trump latest executive order Restrictions on Mail-In Voting Directs the Department of Homeland Security to establish voting-age lists in each state and then make those lists available to state officials. The Department of Homeland Security operates a powerful computer system called SAVE that can verify citizenship by comparing names with information in federal databases.
And at trial in federal court In slow March, transcripts show, in Rhode Island, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, Eric Neff, said his department intended to share voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security. He said the Justice Department and DHS already have a employ agreement governing data sharing, although he did not detail its requirements.
The mail-in voting order is an “iceberg” for the Department of Justice
Justice Department attorney James Tucker has denied any attempt to create a national voter file.
“There will be no national voter registration database,” Tucker said at a hearing in Maine on March 26 – less than a week before Trump signed the executive order.
But David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, likened the Justice Department’s legal strategy to the legal Titanic and the executive order to an iceberg: An order to effectively create a nationwide voter roll could put an end to a strategy that denies such a goal exists.
“The Department of Justice … is trying to assure the courts that this data will not be used to create a national voter roll,” Becker said during a news conference this month.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The Civil Rights Act argued
The Justice Department has so far failed to convince any federal judge that it has the right to state voter records. Judges dismissed Justice Department lawsuits against California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon.
At least a dozen states, all of them led by Republicans, have voluntarily turned over their voter rolls. The Department of Justice did this as well reached a settlement agreement with one state, Oklahoma, for its data.
When Jarbou, a Trump appointee, dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit over Michigan’s voter rolls, she ruled that the Civil Rights Act did not require disclosure. A law signed by President Dwight Eisenhower authorized federal officials to investigate state and local discrimination against black voters.
The law requires states to retain election records for at least 22 months after a federal election, including any documents that come into the possession of an election official. Jarbou wrote in her decision that the state’s voter registration list is created by election officials but is not a document like a voter registration application that comes into their possession.
When the Justice Department presented its position in March, it argued that Jarbou had misinterpreted the Civil Rights Act. “The CRA’s text… does not exclude self-generated documents,” the department’s briefing said.
The Justice Department’s appeal of the Michigan loss made the most progress, with state officials filing their comments Monday. The Justice Department has pushed for quick deadlines to hear appeals, arguing that court rulings are needed before the midterms to ensure election integrity.
Local officials support states
Separately, 18 local officials from across the country, including seven from Michigan, were scheduled to vote on Monday submitted a brief in a case alleging that the Department of Justice failed to provide a reasonable basis to obtain election records under the Civil Rights Act.
As election misinformation has spread in recent years, local election officials are receiving an increasing number of requests for information, the group wrote. They are accustomed to providing public voter registration information, taking steps to exclude sensitive, nonpublic data.
Courts act as a “backstop” to enforce prohibitions on the disclosure of sensitive information in response to registration requests from the public, local elections officials argue.
“Courts should perform the same function in CRA document requests,” the group said.
