Votebeat

Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow new mail ballot restrictions in the 2026 midterms

2026-08-03T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Elections are back before the U.S. Supreme Court: The Trump administration is asking the justices to quickly lift an order blocking its efforts to put new restrictions on mail-in voting for the fast-approaching midterm elections.

It’s unclear how the justices will rule, but the case focuses on a narrow question of whether or not the lower courts issued premature rulings rather than the broader questions about the legality of the executive order.

But no matter what the court decides this time, a series of practical and legal challenges make it increasingly unlikely that the federal government can impose new rules giving the U.S. Postal Service the power to block Americans from voting by mail in November’s elections.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice designated to handle emergency appeals from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ordered the plaintiff states to respond by Monday to the Trump administration’s filing, and a decision could come any time after that. But there are already fewer than 100 days left until the election, and the U.S. Postal Service itself said in July court filings that it is running out of time to carry out the changes the president is demanding in time for this election.

The heart of the matter is President Donald Trump’s March 2026 executive order, which attempts to restrict mail-in voting by requiring creation of a series of lists of people eligible to vote, including one it requires the U.S. Postal Service to secure from states listing all voters eligible to use mail ballots. The order attempts to give the postal service unprecedented new power to prevent delivery of mail ballots to anyone who is not on these lists.

States, nonprofit groups, and Democratic party committees quickly sued over the order, which they argued was unconstitutional because the president has no authority over elections. Federal courts have since issued conflicting orders on the question of whether blocking major provisions would be premature because government agencies hadn’t yet taken final action to carry out Trump’s orders.

A judge in federal court in Washington, D.C. declined to block the challenged provisions, but last month, in a case brought by states, a federal judge in Massachusetts prevented the Trump administration from moving ahead with the plans, putting the whole issue on hold. Separate appeals courts have now upheld both rulings, leaving the Massachusetts injunction in place for now, which is what prompted the Trump administration to file its emergency appeal last week with the Supreme Court.

Still, “I think everyone agrees that it’s not going to be implemented for 2026,” said Derek Muller, an elections specialist at the University of Notre Dame Law School. “The logistics are so horrific.”

To be clear, the issue the court is now being asked to decide isn’t about the legal merits of the executive order itself, or whether Trump has the authority to issue it. The Trump administration is arguing that the federal courts blocked the executive order prematurely because the government is still drafting the rules, which haven’t been finalized. Until the rules are final, the Trump administration argues, the states can’t prove that there is any harm that should be blocked by the courts, or that agencies won’t carry out the order in a way that complies with the law.

The Massachusetts court’s injunction “is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful,” the Trump administration argued in its 116-page filing.

That’s essentially what the other panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded in a ruling Tuesday when it upheld a lower court’s decision not to block the executive order — though the plaintiffs in that case are nonprofit groups and party committees rather than states.

“The scope of the issues at play” before the Supreme Court “are really, really narrow,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights and rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center, one of the lawyers involved in bringing the Washington, D.C. case.

And like Muller, Lang said it appears unlikely that the government would have the time to push through the changes before November.

“The kinds of dramatic changes they are asking for in election administration are not the kinds of things that you get done in a few months’ time,” Lang said. “As a practical reality, I don’t think they can do this in any non-chaotic way.”

If the Supreme Court were to side with the Trump administration this time, an army of lawyers across the country is prepared to again ask the courts to step in as soon as the new rules are finalized.

Even the appeals court judges in Washington that agreed the legal challenges were premature also suggested that they had some qualms about the executive order.

“Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election,” the court said in its ruling.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

The noncitizen voter mystery: New Trump numbers raise more questions than answers

2026-07-27T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The polarizing debate over noncitizen voters escalated last week when New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that an apparent software glitch had led to the unintended registration of 6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024, 400 of whom voted in recent elections.

In a hastily called press conference, Sherrill placed the blame on her predecessor, fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, and said she was taking immediate steps to fix the problems.

Sherrill’s 20-minute briefing raised as many questions as it provided answers. How did a software glitch at the state’s motor vehicles agency lead to adding people who said they weren’t citizens to the state’s voter rolls? Who discovered the problem back in 2024? Why didn’t state officials alert the public when they first learned about the mistake? And what did state officials do about the people who were improperly registered at the time?

Sherrill, who took office in January and said she learned about the problems the week of July 13, said she’s ordered an independent investigation. That’s not good enough for Republicans in Washington and Trenton.

The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding that New Jersey hand over the names of the 6,600 people by Tuesday. New Jersey Republicans question Sherrill’s software glitch explanation and are calling for a legislative investigation.

The New Jersey issue isn’t coming in a vacuum. President Donald Trump has long argued that ineligible noncitizen voters cost him the 2020 election, though no evidence has emerged to support that. His second administration has been focused on rooting out any noncitizen voting, and his top legislative priority is election legislation that he says will block it.

In a televised primetime speech on July 16, Trump said his administration had found 250,000 noncitizen voters on the voter rolls of four states: New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.

Officials in all four states pushed back on Trump’s claims, and said they didn’t understand how the administration arrived at those numbers.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar called the numbers “wildly speculative.” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said that “all evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country.” Even in New Jersey, the 6,600 noncitizen voters discovered by the state did not come close to the 35,152 that the Trump administration claimed to have found in the state. “Do I think that the latest round that he has put out is in some way an attempt to undermine our elections in this country? Yes I do,” Sherrill said at her press conference.

How did the Homeland Security Department come up with the estimates? The Trump administration isn’t saying. But the letters the Department of Homeland Security sent to the four states to notify them of the findings provide some interesting clues.

For instance, the letters qualify the numbers in ways that Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin did not in their public statements.

“We’ve identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states,” Mullin said in a briefing the day after Trump’s speech.

But the letters are more careful in making that claim.

In California, for example, the letter from Mullin said there “may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California.” The letter then went on to say that the government found 81,336 registered voters in California’s public voter registration database with names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers that match those of noncitizens in federal files. That’s less than half the overall estimate; the letter doesn’t explain where the extra 109,496 came from.

In Pennsylvania, Mullin’s letter said the government matched the data of 8,594 registrants to a noncitizen, out of a total of 14,576 potential noncitizens it identified. Nevada’s letter said there were 8,576 matches out of 15,903 potential noncitizens. And according to the Shore News Network, New Jersey’s letter said there were 19,497 matches out of 35,152 potential noncitizens.

Altogether, these numbers in Mullin’s letters say the department has matches for just 118,003 of the 256,463 noncitizens the government is asserting have registered to vote.

The letters specify that Trump officials relied on each state’s public data files. All four of these states are among the 30 that have gone to court to block the federal government from getting access to unredacted versions of their voter rolls, which would include sensitive personal information, such as driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers.

The public versions of the voter rolls only include basic information about individual voters, such as their names and addresses, so it’s unclear how the government could have matched individuals based on social security numbers as it says it did.

It’s likely that even the 118,003 number is too high. States that have audited their own voter rolls for noncitizens or checked them against federal databases by using the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program have found noncitizen totals that are far less concerning.

Upon further investigation, several states have also found that SAVE — which works similarly to the methodology that Mullin apparently used — overestimated the number of noncitizens on their rolls, leading experts and elections officials to warn that the system was unreliable.

Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, called the 250,000 estimate “puzzling and concerning” and said there was no reason to believe the number of noncitizens on the voter rolls is actually that high.

“There are all sorts of reasons why you would get a huge number of false positives,” he said. “There is no reason to trust anything in the order of that 250,000 number. That will absolutely fall apart under any scrutiny.”

Correction, July 31: An earlier version of this story misstated the date of President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election issues. It was on July 16.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Democratic states, leaders sue Trump administration for conditioning grant money on election policies

2026-07-24T20:11:29+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

A coalition of Democratic states and officials has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security arguing that Federal Emergency Management Agency funding is being withheld as leverage to coerce the states into complying with President Donald Trump’s preferred elections and immigration policies.

The states say the department is requiring recipients of the Homeland Security Grant Program — one of FEMA’s largest grants, which can be used for preparation for and response to terrorist and other security threats — to switch to voting systems that employ hand-marked paper ballots, to conduct manual audits of election results, and use a controversial DHS program to identify noncitizens on their voter rolls.

“The Constitution grants the States the power to administer and set the rules governing federal elections, and pursuant to that grant of authority the States have adopted a range of systems for ensuring that votes are counted fairly and accurately,” the lawsuit says. “Defendants, however, seek to upend those laws and policies and—using hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds as a cudgel—impose the current Administration’s preferred policies in their place.”

The suit is being led by Illinois, which is joined by California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the District of Columbia.

The Trump administration has been pressuring states to tighten their election laws and run their voter rolls through the DHS program in question — known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. However, several states that have used the program to identify potential noncitizen voters have found it is prone to false positives.

In a statement, a spokesperson for FEMA said it was “nothing new” that these Democratic leaders “oppose common-sense measures” on election security.

“Election security is national security, and protecting our critical infrastructure remains a top priority for the Trump Administration,” the statement said. “This year, states must take critical, common-sense steps to protect U.S. elections before receiving their full Homeland Security Grant Program awards. These new requirements will preserve election integrity.”

The suit alleges that the department’s threat to withhold 20% of Homeland Security Grant Program funds if states don’t meet the election-related conditions means the plaintiff states would lose out on at least $148 million already allocated to them.

“Donald Trump is actively threatening the safety of our communities and withholding resources from our law enforcement officers and first responders in an effort to seize control of our election system,” Shapiro said in a statement Thursday. “Withholding this funding would be dangerous under any circumstance, but to do so in an attempt to control our elections is a new low — even for Donald Trump.”

At a recent gathering of state election officials, Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, who also serves in a leadership position with the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said the threat to withhold funding wouldn’t have an immediate effect on the midterm election, since planning for elections takes place months and years ahead of time.

However, “if you believe that there are threats against our elections and if you believe the way to secure our elections is to protect against foreign influence, why are you not funding the people who need to be protecting the election systems?” she asked. “It kind of feels like you’re undermining the people who need to do the work.”

The lawsuit isn’t the first time these states have sued the administration over its attempt to shape election policy. In April, the same coalition — minus Hawaii and Kentucky’s Beshear — sued the administration over Trump’s executive order seeking to impose new regulations on mail voting.

Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, said he didn’t think the federal government would succeed in withholding the money from the states.

“Courts don’t tend to like these kinds of conditions being imposed when there’s no clear statutory authority to do so,” he said.

The case is being heard by Rhode Island District Judge Mary Susan McElroy. The Trump administration has not yet filed a response.

Jessica Huseman and Dion Nissenbaum contributed reporting.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania secretary responds to Trump administration’s threat of criminal charges over noncitizen voters

2026-07-15T11:55:17+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Pennsylvania’s top election official, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, gave no indication the state would be changing any policies or practices in response to a letter from President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice warning Schmidt could face criminal prosecution.

Last week, the Justice Department sent letters to all 50 states warning that their chief election officials could be criminally charged if they knowingly allow noncitizens to vote or be registered to vote.

In a response sent Monday, Schmidt told the Justice Department that he takes the prospect of ineligible voters seriously. But he gave no indication the Pennsylvania Department of State would make any changes to the administration of the 2026 election and noted that it is actually local officials who are in charge of maintaining the voter rolls.

“Be assured that these dedicated local officials, as well as our employees who serve at the Department of State, work tirelessly to ensure that Pennsylvania’s voter rolls are accurately maintained,” Schmidt’s letter said. “Furthermore, be assured that the Department refers instances of suspected voter fraud to our state and federal law enforcement partners, and we encourage our county election officials to do the same.”

The letter said that Schmidt’s department already works closely with the Justice Department, highlighting its cooperation in the investigation of an accused noncitizen voter who was charged criminally earlier this year. It also referred the Justice Department to the state’s most recent report on voter registration, which shows that, in 2025, the state sent more than 400,000 notifications to voters in an effort to update information on the voter rolls and that more than 300,000 registrations were canceled, including 120 for people who were ineligible to vote.

Schmidt himself also has a personal history with the issue of noncitizen voting. As a city commissioner in Philadelphia in the 2010s, he uncovered hundreds of noncitizens who had registered to vote and cast ballots in Philadelphia due to an issue in the state’s motor voter registration system, which was fixed after the discovery.

The Pennsylvania Department of State and Trump administration were already at odds prior to the latest round of letters. Since last year, the Justice Department has been seeking a copy of Pennsylvania’s voter roll that contains driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers, which it says it needs to ensure Pennsylvania is complying with federal law.

The Department of State declined to provide that information, citing privacy concerns, and the Justice Department sued. A federal judge recently ruled that the Trump administration didn’t have grounds to seek the information, though it is appealing that ruling.

Gov. Josh Shapiro also recently joined a coalition of states suing the administration over Trump’s March executive order on mail voting, which would have required the state to submit lists of voters who requested a mail ballot to the U.S. Postal Service and then only allow the Postal Service to send ballots to those voters. A federal judge recently paused that order from going into effect.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Judge dismisses Department of Justice lawsuit seeking Pennsylvania voters’ private information

2026-06-28T14:35:50+00:00

What happened?

A federal district judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice seeking a copy of the state’s voter roll containing voters’ personal identifying information.

“Public statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a “fishing expedition,” hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement,” Cathy Bissoon, district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, wrote in a decision Saturday.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for access to state voter rolls containing personal information such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.

What’s the dispute?

The department sued Pennsylvania in September. The Justice Department has said it is seeking the nonpublic information in order to ensure states are complying with federal voter registration laws. In December, the Pennsylvania Department of State urged the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the laws the Justice Department was citing — the Help America Vote Act and National Voter Registration Act — don’t actually give them authority to demand the nonpublic versions of the voter rolls, and that the specific information the Justice Department sought was unnecessary to accomplish its objectives.

The Justice Department has submitted requests to every state. Seventeen Republican-led states, including Alaska and Texas, have voluntarily turned the unredacted rolls over. Other states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, have opted to provide only the publicly available versions of the voter rolls, which do not contain driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers, citing privacy concerns and state laws barring such disclosure. So far, federal judges have ruled against the Justice Department in nine states, including Oregon, California, and Michigan.

What happens now?

Gov. Josh Shapiro touted the ruling on X, saying “no matter what the Trump Administration tries next, we’re going to stand up to protect Pennsylvanians’ right to privacy — and our fundamental right to vote.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling or whether it plans to appeal. The department has appealed similar rulings in some, but not all, other states. The first of those appeals, in Michigan, was recently decided, and agreed that the state did not have to share its data.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the Justice Department’s request for voter rolls:

- U.S. Justice Department presses Pennsylvania for answers on how it manages voter rolls, July 9, 2025

- Why states should scrutinize the Justice Department’s requests for voter rolls, August 11, 2025

- U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls, September 25, 2025

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Appeals court rules against Trump administration in Michigan voter roll dispute

2026-06-24T21:10:24+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

What happened?

A federal appeals court has ruled that Michigan does not have to turn over its unredacted voter roll to the Department of Justice, dealing the Trump administration its highest-profile loss yet in its quest to obtain voter data from states ahead of the 2026 midterms.

What’s the dispute?

Since last year, the Department of Justice has demanded lists of registered voters from virtually every state, including Michigan in July. The state turned over the public version of its voter file but refused to turn over personally identifying information such as partial Social Security numbers.

In response, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Michigan in September but lost in district court in February after a judge dismissed the case, arguing that none of the laws cited by the department required the disclosure. The department then appealed the case to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with the lower court’s reasoning.

In addition to Michigan, the department has sued 29 other states and Washington, D.C., to compel them to share their voter rolls. (Seventeen states have complied voluntarily.) So far, lower courts have dismissed several of those lawsuits, with none finding in favor of the Department of Justice.

What is the plaintiff asking for?

The Department of Justice has argued that a number of federal laws, including the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, entitle it to access to the unredacted voter rolls, including voters’ personal information. Many states have declined to provide that information, arguing that it would pose privacy concerns and violate state law. Federal officials have not provided an official reason for their requests, but they appear to be looking for noncitizen voters on the rolls.

What happens now?

Michigan’s case is the first to be heard, and be ruled on, at the appellate level. The next step up would be to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Department of Justice officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Even if the case is taken up by the country’s highest court, a resolution — particularly one that could be meaningfully implemented — before the midterm elections is unlikely. Absentee ballots for the Michigan primary election start going out Thursday.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the DOJ’s fight for access to voting rolls:

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s overhaul of SAVE database

2026-06-22T23:08:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update, June 30, 7:22 p.m.: The Trump administration has paused certain features in the SAVE system to comply with the June 22 ruling, preventing state and local election officials from performing bulk searches or using voters’ Social Security numbers as search criteria, according to public records obtained by Votebeat.

A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s overhaul of an immigration verification system to check voter eligibility across the nation, striking down a central pillar of the government’s efforts to exercise more federal control over elections.

The judge cited Texas’ use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, which flagged several voters who were actually citizens as noncitizens, as evidence that it threatened both privacy and voting rights less than five months before the November midterm election.

“The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said in her 75-page ruling. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Sooknanan’s decision does not eliminate SAVE, a decades-old immigration-status verification program. But it blocks the Trump administration’s 2025 overhaul of the system, which made it easier for states to check their voter rolls against the federal database, which includes individuals’ citizenship status and Social Security numbers.

Election officials have found that the modified database, however, is prone to error, something Sooknanan referenced in her decision. Federal officials, she wrote, “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”

The ruling could strengthen challenges by voters who were removed, flagged, or placed under review by the system.

“States have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information,” the judge wrote.

Voting rights groups, Trump administration react to ruling

The case was filed by the League of Women Voters and other groups who argued that the SAVE system was inaccurate and that using it to check voter rolls violated citizen privacy rights.

“Today’s decision is a resounding victory for voters,” said Marcia Johnson, chief of activation and justice for the League of Women Voters. “Efforts to create a federal voter database to facilitate voter purges threaten the fundamental right at the heart of our democracy.”

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who worked in the White House on democracy and voting rights issues under President Joe Biden, agreed that voters would benefit from the ruling.

“This provides incremental reassurance that they won’t be inaccurately singled out and have to jump through even more hoops to vote,” he said. “It stops the use of a deeply flawed process to cause trouble for real eligible citizens.”

However, James Percival, the general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, which maintains the SAVE database, criticized the ruling as a misguided effort to block the Trump administration from trying to address voter fraud.

“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” Percival said in a statement.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Michael Morley, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law and faculty director of the FSU Election Law Center, said the ruling prevents the federal government from using all the information at its disposal to ensure that only eligible voters take part in elections.

“It seems to leave the government in a somewhat tenuous position of being able to provide citizenship data to states for voting purposes that is less accurate than it otherwise would be,” he said. “It restricts the government’s ability to take advantage of all of the most accurate sources of information it has in order, in most cases, to confirm people’s citizenship status.”

Judge cites Texas’ use of SAVE database in ruling

Texas intervened as a defendant in the case since it had been actively using SAVE to verify the citizenship status of its more than 18 million registered voters. The state gained access to the database in March 2025 after signing a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Homeland Security.

In October, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced SAVE had flagged 2,724 people as “potential noncitizens” and sent the list to county election officials to investigate. That process involved mailing letters to each person flagged, requesting additional information to verify their citizenship. If county officials received no response after 30 days, the person’s registration was canceled.

Some voters who responded to the notices turned out to be U.S. citizens after all; others had their registrations canceled, although a specific number hasn’t been released. Hundreds of other registrants who were flagged had registered at the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency that issues driver’s licenses and state IDs. In Texas, proof of citizenship is required to obtain those documents.

In the ruling, Sooknanan said the state’s use of the database burdened and risked disenfranchising voters by incorrectly flagging naturalized citizens as noncitizens. The judge pointed to examples of voters in Texas who were U.S. citizens and had to provide proof of citizenship to keep their registration active and at least one U.S. citizen whose registration was revoked without their knowledge.

Sooknanan also pointed to an amicus brief filed by Travis County voter registration officials as evidence that the use of the overhauled SAVE database was inaccurate. The state flagged 97 potential noncitizens in Travis County. Voter registration officials found that about a quarter of those voters had registered at DPS and therefore had likely provided proof of citizenship.

Travis County officials were later able to confirm that at least 11 people who were flagged as potential noncitizens were in fact citizens.

“Texas threatened to revoke their voter registrations because of information obtained through the modified SAVE system; and they were required to confirm their citizenship to maintain their voter registrations,” Sooknanan said.

The secretary of state’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Celia Israel, the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said the ruling is “validating.”

“We have asked a lot of questions in the past several months about the SAVE database and about its accuracy,” Israel said. “The lawsuit confirms that there are inaccuracies and that it is worthwhile for us officials at the county level to ask the state questions.”

Other civil rights groups and voters have also challenged Texas’ use of the database in a federal court in Austin. The lawsuit is still pending.

Sasha Hupka contributed reporting.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Federal government investigating potential noncitizen voters in Macomb County

2026-06-05T16:26:52+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

The Department of Homeland Security is conducting “an active investigation” of potential noncitizen voters in a swingy suburban Detroit county, according to a subpoena obtained by Votebeat.

Homeland Security Investigations sent the subpoena to Macomb County in January, days after County Clerk Anthony Forlini said his team had discovered 15 potential noncitizens registered to vote.

The subpoena requested “all available information” on noncitizen voters from Macomb County in Michigan’s Qualified Voter File, the state’s official voter roll. The request includes applications to vote, “types of voting conducted,” and “any signed documents.”

Forlini told Votebeat on Wednesday that he hadn’t heard the results of any investigations related to what his office shared. When requests come in from other government entities, he said, they are routed through the county’s attorneys.

“We always cooperate,” Forlini said, calling the request “pretty standard.” He said that anytime the federal government asks the county for something, “we provide it.”

The request appears to be another recent example of the federal government trying to sniff out noncitizen voters. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, but it has become something of a rallying cry for Republicans in Michigan and across the country.

In April, the Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed at least three counties in Texas for detailed records about individual voters after the state turned over its voter roll to the U.S. Department of Justice. A number of states have declined to share that data, including Michigan, and have been sued by the federal government as a result.

Forlini — who is also Republicans’ candidate for secretary of state this fall — has repeatedly called attention to noncitizen voting and said it is the result of “a problem in the system.” He dove headlong into the issue in January, when his staff compared a list of people who had claimed to be noncitizens to get out of jury duty to a list of registered voters. They found three people who both had claimed a lack of citizenship and who had a history of voting.

Later that month, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced that of those three people, one was a citizen, one was a noncitizen who had last voted in 2018 before their registration was canceled in 2022, and one was still under review.

Comparing two separate databases to try to find noncitizen voters has a spotty track record, in part because it’s easy to mistake two different people as one because they have similar names or addresses. Jury questionnaires are also not 100% reliable — people sometimes lie about their citizenship to get out of jury duty.

In March, the Michigan Department of State sent a letter to county clerks and election directors across the state warning them against using jury pools to find noncitizen voters, lest eligible voters find their registrations canceled or are “accused of improper conduct or subject to undue criminal investigation.”

But Forlini has stood by his effort. Last month, he said he had found seven additional noncitizens registered to vote. This time, he was more confident than ever that the people in question were not citizens because, as he told Votebeat, he was working with federal officials who had access to a database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. The Michigan Department of State is still investigating these potential noncitizens, and it remains unclear if any of them ever cast ballots.

Forlini said Wednesday that he believes he has “a duty” to use all the tools at his disposal to root out noncitizen voters, and he believes the secretary of state’s office has that duty as well.

Noncitizen voting is “a flaw that just can’t happen,” Forlini said, adding that the issue went beyond partisan politics and individual officeholders. “We have to fix it.”

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said Thursday she was not aware of any other counties in Michigan receiving similar subpoenas. The only other attempt to go through a local government to get Michigan voting records she knew of, she said, was the Department of Justice’s recent request for 2024 ballots from Wayne County. Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett denied that request last month, as municipal governments — townships and cities — have custody of ballots in Michigan.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it does not comment on ongoing investigations, but added that Homeland Security Investigations “remains committed to investigating and combating election fraud wherever it is found.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Judge dismisses federal government’s lawsuit over Wisconsin voter records

2026-05-21T20:11:12+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

A federal judge on Thursday rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s demand for Wisconsin’s unredacted voter list, the latest defeat for President Donald Trump’s administration in its quest to obtain more information about voters around the country.

In his 10-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson said the department’s allegation that the Wisconsin Elections Commission violated the Civil Rights Act by not turning over the state’s voter roll “fails as a matter of law.”

The Department of Justice has requested voter rolls with unredacted information — including voters’ full birthdates, full or partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information — from at least 48 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. At least 15 states have provided or said they will provide the data, but most have not, prompting the department to file suit against 30 states plus Washington, D.C.

Federal judges have so far dismissed those lawsuits in seven other states, including Michigan, Oregon, California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Arizona. The Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Maine was also dismissed on Thursday.

The department has so far appealed three of those dismissals, the ones in Michigan, Oregon, and California.

The Justice Department has said it is entitled to the voter rolls under federal law and needs the data to enforce requirements in federal statutes. Officials in both Republican- and Democratic-led states have pushed back on the Justice Department’s request for unredacted voter data, saying it could put voters at risk. They also say the department hasn’t provided enough information on how the data would be used.

The federal government requested Wisconsin’s unredacted voter rolls late last year, and the Wisconsin Elections Commission argued that state law explicitly bans election officials from disclosing information like driver’s license numbers to most people who aren’t election officials. That led to the lawsuit.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This ruling protects against federal intrusions into Wisconsin’s election system,” said ACLU of Wisconsin legal director Ryan Cox, adding that it “ensures private voter data is safe from abuse, and prevents the Trump administration from playing politics with our right to vote.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit over Arizona’s voter rolls

2026-04-28T22:29:31+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

A federal judge has dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Arizona over the state’s refusal to turn over an unredacted version of its voter roll, finding that the state isn’t required by federal law to provide it.

U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich’s ruling comes after President Donald Trump’s administration sued Arizona last year, alleging that the state was interfering with the federal government’s ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws. It sought to compel the state to hand over its full, unredacted voter list, which includes sensitive information such as voters’ full birthdates and Social Security numbers.

The DOJ has requested similar data from virtually every state, part of what it says is an effort to make sure states are maintaining their voter rolls and removing ineligible voters in compliance with federal law. At least 12 states have voluntarily shared the data, but most have declined, citing state and federal laws that officials argued precluded doing so.

In response, the Justice Department has so far sued 30 states and the District of Columbia, but its arguments have been repeatedly rejected by federal courts. Five of the lawsuits — not counting the one against Arizona — had previously been dismissed, and the Justice Department has yet to secure a favorable ruling in any of the cases.

Brnovich, like other federal judges in Michigan, Oregon, California, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, said that none of the three laws that federal prosecutors used to justify their request — the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act — required the disclosure of the data.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes, both Democrats, applauded Brnovich’s decision in a statement. They said she “rightfully dismissed” the lawsuit.

The pair previously urged local election officials not to give full voter files to the federal government, writing in a letter to county recorders, who control voter registration data, that disclosure of such materials to the DOJ would “violate both federal and state law” and they must “fulfill [their] oath by declining any such illegal demands.”

“Arizona acted correctly in refusing this request, and today’s ruling vindicates that decision,” their statement on the ruling read. “Our offices will continue to defend the privacy of Arizona voters against federal overreach.”

It’s unknown whether the Justice Department will appeal the decision. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has so far appealed the dismissals in Michigan, Oregon, and California.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the DOJ’s lawsuits and requests seeking state voter rolls:

Voting rights groups sue Trump administration to stop collection of voter data (April 21, 2026)
Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security (April 10, 2026)
In fight with DOJ over voting roll access, Michigan may be poised to go the distance (March 14, 2026)
Top Arizona officials urge counties to withhold voter data as FBI, DHS relitigate state’s elections (March 11, 2026)
Judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit over Michigan’s voter rolls (Feb. 10, 2026)
Texas shares entire voter registration list with the Trump administration (Jan. 9, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues Arizona, Connecticut for access to unredacted state voter rolls (Jan. 6, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues WEC for not providing unredacted voter list (Dec. 18, 2025)
U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls (Sept. 25, 2025)
A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’ (Sept. 4, 2025)

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Voting rights groups sue Trump administration to stop collection of voter data

2026-04-21T15:19:26+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

On Tuesday, a coalition of voting rights groups filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice to block the Trump administration from collecting voters’ personal data in order to create what they argue is a national voter list.

What’s the dispute?

Last fall, the DOJ began asking states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant identifying information on every registered voter in each state, including partial Social Security numbers — and other election-related data. The DOJ has said the effort is central to enforcing federal election law requiring states to regularly maintain voter lists by searching for and removing ineligible voters.

At least 12 states, including Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming, have voluntarily complied.

The DOJ has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for refusing to turn over their full voter lists. Federal courts have dismissed those cases in five states, although the administration has been appealing those decisions.

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs argue the DOJ’s efforts are an attempt to take over voter list maintenance from the states, violating privacy laws and risking wrongful voter removals.

“No federal statute authorizes DOJ’s sprawling new voter surveillance, data consolidation, and purging operation. In taking these actions, DOJ is usurping powers that the Constitution and federal statutes vest in the States,” the lawsuit says.

Who are the plaintiffs?

Voters from Texas and Nebraska and voting advocacy organization Common Cause. The plaintiffs are represented by organizations such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the American Civil Liberties Union, Protect Democracy, the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, and the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.

What are the plaintiffs asking for?

The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to halt the DOJ’s efforts to collect the data and to order the data to be deleted. In addition, they want the courts to prevent the DOJ from “disclosing any confidential voter list data internally and to non-DOJ personnel, including to other federal agencies, state agencies, or private contractors,” the lawsuit says.

What happens now?

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At least one other lawsuit filed in federal court is also challenging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — the database used to check the citizenship of registered voters. The database was revamped by the Trump administration last year to enable states to run their entire voter rolls through it.

Exclusive: Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap discussed election records, litigation with feds

2026-04-14T14:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

New records show a top Maricopa County official directly corresponded with the U.S. Department of Justice last year about election records and litigation as the department sought to obtain Arizona’s voter roll and probe the county’s past elections.

The emails, obtained by watchdog group American Oversight and shared exclusively with Votebeat, show Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap signaling support for the Trump administration’s investigation into his own county’s elections. The county, home to Phoenix, is a key election battleground.

The records also suggest that Heap, a Republican, met with Arizona’s top federal prosecutor just before the DOJ informed the county it was looking into its past elections, raising questions about his level of coordination with federal law enforcement officials.

In addition, the documents suggest that the recorder’s office withheld records from Votebeat. In March, Votebeat filed a public records request for copies of emails between Heap and the DOJ during the time period in question, but his office did not provide them. Under state law, public officials cannot withhold requested records without any basis, and doing so could lead to civil penalties.

Liz Hempowicz, deputy executive director of American Oversight, said Heap’s engagement with federal law enforcement officials amid the ongoing investigations, along with a recent push by his office to question certain voters’ eligibility, should “set off alarm bells.”

“Election officials have a duty to administer elections fairly, based on facts and evidence — not to blur the line between election administration and politicized law enforcement,” she said. “This pattern risks turning baseless suspicion into policy and sweeping eligible voters into investigations they should never be part of.”

Heap did not respond to a request for comment. Judy Keane, a spokesperson for his office, also did not respond to questions from Votebeat.

Records: Heap voiced support for Department of Justice efforts

In one of the newly revealed messages, Heap says he learned in mid-August 2025 that Maricopa County’s elections and information technology staff was planning to delete certain records from the 2020 and 2022 elections. In response, he sent a letter to Maricopa County Manager Jen Pokorski raising concerns about the county’s email retention policies.

Then, the records show Heap’s executive assistant coordinating a meeting between Heap and U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine on Aug. 27.

Around the same time, Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon began threatening legal action against Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, questioning the state’s voter registration and list maintenance procedures and his refusal to share unredacted copies of the state voter roll.

Records separately obtained by Votebeat show that Dhillon had reached out to Fontes on Aug. 12 to warn of litigation. Then, on Sept. 4, Dhillon sent a letter to the state and Maricopa County instructing them to preserve all election records from 2020 to the present.

“It has come to our attention that the Maricopa Elections Department and Recorder intend to destroy election records from the 2020 and 2022 federal elections, including staff emails,” she wrote, adding that her office had “received complaints concerning errors and malfeasance in the conduct of the Maricopa County elections.”

“Please be advised that any attempt to destroy these and any other records will be construed by the Civil Rights Division as evidence of intentional spoliation of evidence,” she continued.

The next day, Heap wrote back to Dhillon and voiced support for her efforts.

“Please be assured that my office is committed to full cooperation with the Department of Justice as it conducts its investigation,” he wrote. “We share your goal of safeguarding election integrity and transparency, and we will continue to work with all relevant stakeholders to ensure that no records are lost, compromised, or destroyed.”

He added that his predecessor, GOP Recorder Stephen Richer, had transferred control of all election records to the county’s elections and information technology departments. Heap has repeatedly lamented that the county’s board of supervisors usurped his office’s power through that agreement with Richer, and he told Dhillon that he was no longer in charge of any documents she might seek from prior elections. However, he noted he was engaged in a legal battle with the supervisors, who have refuted his characterization of the dispute and the agreement, to regain control of the documents.

That caught the attention of Maureen Riordan, who was then acting chief of the Voting Section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. She emailed Heap to ask him to forward the docket number for the litigation, which remains unresolved.

“If you can send the court documents and the next court date, that would be really helpful as well,” she wrote. “Thanks in advance.”

Heap, Department of Justice continue to scrutinize Maricopa elections

Heap was first elected recorder in 2024 with the support of President Donald Trump’s allies who questioned the integrity of the 2020 election, and he has spent much of his term in office promoting election security — sometimes alongside Trump administration officials.

In February, Heap joined then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a hastily arranged press conference to promote federal legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Hours after that event, he claimed that his office had identified 137 noncitizens on the county’s voter roll via a digital database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. Experts have long warned that the database — called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — is unreliable.

Since then, Heap has said that he intends to change the registration status of those voters through a process that several election experts and lawyers called legally dubious. He also formally referred 207 voters to local prosecutors for investigation — significantly more than the 137 people that he previously flagged.

Meanwhile, the federal government continues to investigate the 2020 election in Maricopa County — even though several prior reviews have found no evidence of widespread fraud or a stolen presidential race.

Last month, the FBI subpoenaed election records from the Arizona Senate, which conducted a controversial review of the county’s election results in 2021. Courchaine’s office issued the subpoena and is overseeing a grand jury impaneled in Phoenix.

Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of DHS that typically focuses on transnational narcotics and trafficking investigations, has also been probing past elections in recent months. Records previously obtained by Votebeat show that the agency asked the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for records from its 2020 election investigation.

In January, the DOJ officially filed its lawsuit against Fontes over the state’s voter roll. That case is still pending in federal court.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security

2026-04-10T22:14:40+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

At least three Texas counties this week either received or were told they would soon receive administrative subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department is seeking detailed records about some individual voters, including their registration applications and voter history, though counties don’t yet know which ones.

The subpoenas appear to be linked to a series of efforts by the Trump administration to verify the citizenship of registered voters. In December, Texas turned over the state’s voter roll to the Justice Department. The transfer included voters’ identifiable information such as dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and partial social security numbers. It did not include, however, voters’ registration applications or signatures — the state does not have access to that information, which is kept by county voter registrars.

Lubbock County’s elections administrator, Roxzine Stinson, said she met with a Homeland Security representative who informed her she would soon receive a subpoena seeking additional information for at least 10 voters, and potentially up to 30. Stinson said she’ll seek guidance from the county’s legal department on how to respond.

The Homeland Security representative told Stinson “all 254 counties will be contacted,” she said.

Election officials in Brazos County received a subpoena by email this week, Trudy Hancock, the county’s elections administrator, confirmed to Votebeat. Hancock said the subpoena specifically requests voter registration records, including voter registration applications, signatures, and voter history, but doesn’t list the names of individual voters. She said she’s asking for legal advice on how to respond “because the request is open-ended.”

Suzie Harvey, the election administrator in Montgomery County confirmed she has also received a subpoena that was delivered in person, but similarly to Hancock, it isn’t specific about which voters’ records it’s seeking.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the subpoenas Friday. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on whether it has received a subpoena from DHS but Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson, said the office is aware that some counties are receiving them.

The Trump administration has aggressively sought to obtain voter roll data from the states, requesting unredacted versions that include voters’ personally identifying information, such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. So far, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for declining to provide it.

The federal government has also urged states to check their voter rolls against a Homeland Security database, known as SAVE, that it overhauled to more easily check voter rolls for potential noncitizens.

Texas did so and asked counties to investigate 2,724 voters flagged as potential noncitizens. Counties have found at least some of those voters to be citizens, including some who had already provided proof of citizenship to the state. Watchdog groups have criticized the database’s accuracy.

Earlier this month, CNN reported that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had reached an agreement to give DHS the voter roll data obtained from states.

Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University who advised President Joe Biden’s administration on democracy and voting rights, said that if the agency is investigating potential noncitizens who have registered to vote, it makes sense that it might want additional information and records. To obtain that info, though, the subpoenas would need to request information about specific voters.

“You’d want the actual voter registration form, the actual mail ballot envelope if there was one, etc, to see if the individual falsely swore they were a citizen,” Levitt said. He added that open-ended subpoenas such as the ones Hancock and Harvey received seem “very weird.”

In a statement, Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said the organization recognizes the importance of federal oversight “within its proper constitutional bounds,” and is “committed to ensuring that any such requests comply with applicable law and respect the principles of federalism that govern election administration in Texas.”

The organization is recommending that any county election officials receiving a subpoena from the federal government consult with their county attorney or legal representation before taking any action.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

In fight with DOJ over voting roll access, Michigan may be poised to go the distance

2026-03-16T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Michigan was one of several states that refused to share its voter rolls with the federal government. Now, it may be the most likely to have to defend that decision in higher courts — potentially even the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Justice Department has several appeals underway involving states that declined to share their voter rolls and initially prevailed in federal courts. Legal experts say the department may be seeking a ruling from the nation’s highest court before the November midterm elections — and Michigan’s case, because it is moving through a faster appellate circuit, could reach it first.

“In Michigan, [the DOJ] filed an appeal within two days of the order appearing on the docket,” compared to much slower responses to other states, said Derek Clinger, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “There’s certainly evidence that they’re pushing the Michigan case the most.”

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals this week partially granted the DOJ’s request for an expedited briefing schedule in the government’s appeal of the Michigan voter roll case. The case won’t move quite as fast as the DOJ requested, but briefs will be due toward the end of the month and in mid-April.

This is just the latest legal battle after the DOJ sued Michigan and a number of other states in September over their refusal to share unredacted versions of their voter rolls. In Michigan, the state shared the information already publicly available but declined to include personal identifying information such as Social Security numbers. In its arguments, Michigan said it would violate several federal and state statutes by turning over the full dataset.

So far, the department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia over their rolls.

A federal judge dismissed the suit against Michigan last month, writing that none of the laws the DOJ cited required the state to disclose the data.

Since then, the Justice Department has appealed similar rulings in Michigan, Oregon and California. Michigan, however, sits in a unique place that may make its case more likely to go the distance. Michigan is in the Sixth Circuit, where appeals tend to move more quickly than the Ninth Circuit, which oversees California and Oregon.

Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan, noted “75% of the judges on the Sixth Circuit were appointed by Republican presidents,” whereas the judges on the Ninth Circuit were mostly appointed by Democrats. That breakdown may suggest that the government is engaged in “forum shopping” — finding a court where the judges are more likely to agree.

“But in my view, it is wrong to assume that the deck is stacked in [the] DOJ’s favor. Just as the district court judge, a Trump appointee, applied the law faithfully to rule against Trump, I expect the same result in the Sixth Circuit,” she wrote in an email to Votebeat.

Clinger agreed that it appears likely that the DOJ is trying to get at least one of the cases to the Supreme Court and that Michigan’s is best positioned to be that case.

The DOJ’s legal strategy also appears to have shifted since the initial cases were filed, he said. Notably, the request for expedited briefing in all three appeals suggests greater urgency, given the government did not request the same timeline at the district court level and hasn’t done so in other pending cases.

The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.

In its request to expedite the Michigan case, the department cited the midterms, arguing that “Michigan voters need to know that its elections are secure and that noncitizens, deceased [individuals] and voters with multiple records are not registered to vote in its elections” before the elections take place. It made nearly identical arguments in California and Oregon.

If that remains the goal, time is of the essence. Even if the DOJ were to win broader access to state voter rolls, there are restrictions that prevent the removal of voters from the rolls ahead of elections. The National Voter Registration Act, for instance, bans states from doing list maintenance within 90 days of an election. This year’s primary is Aug. 4. It also contains specific steps states and counties must undertake to ensure accuracy.

“Even if this case is decided in the summer, there’s still kind of a whole other process in place to remove voters,” Clinger said. “It seems like it’ll be difficult for them to get what they want in time for the midterms.”

If nothing else, Clinger said, the DOJ may be looking for a split among circuit courts, as the Supreme Court is typically more likely to take a case if different jurisdictions issue conflicting rulings.

A spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State directed Votebeat to a joint statement between Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued after the case against the state was first dismissed in district court. Benson has called the Justice Department’s lawsuit, and its initial requests for voter role access, an “overreach.”

Nessel vowed to continue to “protect the personal data of Michiganders.”

“We will not be bullied into violating the privacy rights of residents,” she said.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Top Arizona officials urge counties to withhold voter data as FBI, DHS relitigate state’s elections

2026-03-11T17:01:33+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Arizona’s top law enforcement official and chief election officer are warning county officials not to hand over full, unredacted voter files to the federal government amid probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into the state’s 2020 election.

Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — both Democrats — wrote in a joint letter to county recorders that disclosure of such materials to the U.S Department of Justice would “violate both federal and state law.” They urged the recorders, who control voter registration data, to “fulfill your oath by declining any such illegal demands.” Mayes and Fontes stopped short of promising litigation against anyone who gave voter information to the federal agencies, though they hinted at it.

“Our offices are committed to upholding the sanctity of Arizona’s elections and democratic process,” the letter read. “We will pursue to the fullest extent of the law all possible remedies to ensure the integrity of Arizona’s elections and the privacy rights of its citizens.”

Their letter comes amid moves by President Donald Trump’s administration to relitigate an election he lost, and that was repeatedly upheld after being subjected to unprecedented challenges, reviews, and scrutiny.

It was sent out to counties hours after State Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, announced that he had received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to the chamber’s controversial review of Maricopa County’s election results, which was conducted in 2021. That review ultimately concluded that former President Joe Biden had indeed defeated Trump in the state’s most populous county.

Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of DHS that typically focuses on transnational narcotics and trafficking investigations, has also been probing past elections in recent weeks. Records obtained by Votebeat via a public records request show that the agency asked Mayes’ office for records from the 2020 election investigation conducted by her predecessor, Republican Mark Brnovich. That investigation, similar to lawmakers’ audit, found no indication of widespread fraud or conspiracy. The HSI investigation was first reported by The Atlantic.

In addition, Fontes is currently engaged in a lawsuit with the DOJ over his refusal to provide versions of the state’s voter rolls that contain personally identifying information on voters. Such records include voters’ full birthdates, full or partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information.

So far, there are few indications that federal officials are going directly to counties, and the letter appears to be a precaution. Officials in Pinal and Yavapai Counties — among the state’s most conservative areas — told Votebeat that they had not received any requests for their voter rolls from the DOJ, and were unaware of any such requests submitted to other counties.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, called the letter “preventative” and “a full family reminder.” But she also noted Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s presence at a recent press conference in Scottsdale with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

Hours after that event, Heap, a Republican, issued a press release claiming that his office had identified 137 noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls by running a subset of voters affected by a longstanding state error through a digital database maintained by DHS. Experts have long warned that the system that the office used — called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — is unreliable, suggesting the number is likely inflated.

Judy Keane, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment on the letter from Mayes and Fontes. She also did not reply to questions about whether the office had been approached by federal officials about providing its full voter rolls, and what Heap would do if that were to happen.

The office has repeatedly refused to answer questions about its use of the SAVE system or how it is handling suspected noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls. Votebeat requested copies of any notices sent to affected voters, but was told on Feb. 23 that no such records existed. The office has yet to respond to Votebeat’s subsequent requests for any notices.

FBI subpoena targets records from Maricopa County

The FBI’s subpoena of the Arizona Senate sought records related to the 2020 election in Maricopa County.

However, the agency has yet to seek records from the county itself.

That suggests that investigators obtained records that were largely already public. Most documents pertaining to the legislative review of the 2020 election were turned over to news outlets and advocacy groups that sued for public access to them in the wake of the review.

But the records that the county turned over to lawmakers and auditors included data downloaded from hard drives used during the 2020 election. Petersen confirmed to Votebeat that the records he gave the FBI contained ballot images.

That gives the agency some records similar to those it obtained when agents searched an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, in January. That unprecedented raid also sought records tied to the 2020 election.

The records Petersen turned over to the FBI may have also contained voter information. Fontes said in a statement that his office was “working to identify legal options to secure personal voter information in the 2020 data that was shared.” He called the FBI’s subpoena an effort to “undermine the legal process,” an apparent reference to the ongoing legal battle between his office and the Justice Department, and reiterated similar concerns in the joint letter to county recorders.

“If your office receives a federal grand jury subpoena demanding that you turn over voters’ private data, we urge you to notify our offices immediately,” the letter read. “The grand jury should not serve to circumvent Arizona’s ongoing lawsuit, and our offices will pursue all legal actions available to prevent the Department of Justice from misusing the grand jury process.”

Petersen said that the subpoena he received had indicated that a grand jury was impaneled in Phoenix. He declined to share the subpoena, or answer questions about whether it contained other information about the FBI’s investigation.

The FBI declined to comment on the focus of its investigation or to share a copy of the subpoena.

Lennea Montandon, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, declined to answer questions about exactly what the grand jury was investigating.

“Per policy, we do not comment on grand jury proceedings, any potential investigations or upcoming charges,” she said.

HSI inquiry into 2020 election appears focused on debunked claims

Emails between the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and an HSI investigator suggest that the federal agency’s inquiry could be focused on long-debunked claims about the 2020 election.

Mayes said in a statement that her office provided public records related to its earlier investigation of the 2020 election when it was first approached by local HSI leadership. Records show that state prosecutors provided Matthew Murphy, acting special agent in charge of HSI Arizona, with a summary of the review’s findings on Feb. 20.

“We were happy to share them, because those materials speak for themselves,” Mayes said, adding that the “exhaustive” investigation didn’t find any proof to substantiate allegations that the election had been stolen in Arizona.

A few days later, records show that Murphy followed up asking for any additional reports or findings. He said he was specifically seeking further information regarding disputed claims of late-arriving ballots included in certified election results, questionable ballots from unknown printers, and deletion of election records.

Such allegations have long since been disproven. Claims that early ballots that arrived late were still counted in 2020 originated from documents recording the transfer of ballots to a vendor for scanning. The date on that document didn’t reflect the initial receipt of those ballots by local election officials.

Similarly, small discrepancies between paper ballots sparked conspiracies that ballots produced by an unknown printer had been injected into the vote totals. But county officials used several different types of printers at polling locations in 2020, which accounted for those differences.

Trump and his allies also previously accused county officials of deleting files prior to complying with a subpoena from the Arizona Senate. Later, the founder of one of the firms hired in the chamber’s audit told lawmakers that he was able to recover and view the database, which county officials said auditors had not correctly retrieved from the system.

Records obtained by Votebeat show that prosecutors provided multiple reports in response to Murphy’s request for further information on the claims. He then followed up again, asking additional questions about claims of late ballots and unknown printers.

“Thanks for sharing guys much appreciated,” he wrote. “Couple of quick follow up questions based on my review and in trying to focus on the few areas we are following up on.”

Murphy did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment. Prosecutors don’t appear to have responded further. Mayes called the investigation “unserious.” She said in a statement that the probe was “based on nothing but conspiracy theories and lies,” and noted that the office’s prior investigation never uncovered widespread fraud or malfeasance.

“Those conclusions were true then and they remain true now,” she said. “There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election in Arizona.

In an email, a spokesperson for DHS declined to answer questions about the investigation, but said that the agency was “actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found.” The spokesperson, who did not identify themself and did not respond to a request to do so, said HSI had “repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections,” pointing to a handful of arrests of noncitizens for alleged voter fraud. Research has long shown that such instances are extremely rare.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit over Michigan’s voter rolls

2026-02-10T16:10:19+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

UPDATE March 2, 2026, 4:50 p.m.: The U.S. Department of Justice filed an appeal in this decision on Feb. 27. Opening materials in the case are due to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by March 13.

A federal judge has dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Michigan over the state’s refusal to give the department an unredacted list of registered voters, finding the state isn’t required by federal law to turn it over.

Last year, the Department of Justice requested unredacted voter data from virtually every state as part of President Donald Trump’s quest to root out noncitizen voters, which are extremely rare. The department requested a copy of Michigan’s voter roll in July, along with answers to a series of questions about its voter registration practices.

In September, Michigan provided a redacted version of the voter roll that withheld voters’ personally identifiable information, which the state said was necessary to avoid breaking state and federal law. The Department of Justice then sued Michigan for the complete data later that month.

However, on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Hala Y. Jarbou of the Western District of Michigan, a Trump nominee, dismissed the case. Jarbou wrote in her opinion that none of the three laws that the Department of Justice had used to justify its request — the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act — required the disclosure of the data.

Justice Department officials have argued that obtaining voter rolls is necessary in order for the department to make sure states are complying with federal requirements for how voter rolls should be maintained. Over the past year, the Department of Justice has sued 24 states, plus Washington, D.C., for not sharing their data. Federal judges have also so far dismissed the suits against California and Oregon.

A spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

The Department of Justice also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including a question about whether it would appeal the ruling.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the Justice Department’s lawsuits and requests seeking state voter rolls:

Texas shares entire voter registration list with the Trump administration (Jan. 9, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues Arizona, Connecticut for access to unredacted state voter rolls (Jan. 6, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues WEC for not providing unredacted voter list (Dec. 18, 2025)
U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls (Sept. 25, 2025)
A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’ (Sept. 4, 2025)

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Texas shares entire voter registration list with the Trump administration

2026-01-09T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas officials have turned over the state’s voter roll to the U.S. Justice Department, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, complying with the Trump administration’s demands for access to data on millions of voters across the country.

The Justice Department last fall began asking all 50 states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant identifying information on every registered voter in each state — and other election-related data. The Justice Department has said the effort is central to its mission of enforcing election law requiring states to regularly maintain voter lists by searching for and removing ineligible voters.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune that the state had sent its voter roll, which includes information on the approximately 18.4 million voters registered in Texas, to the Justice Department on Dec. 23.

The state included identifiable information about voters, including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, Pierce said.

Experts and state officials around the country have raised concerns over the legality of the Justice Department’s effort to obtain states’ voter rolls and whether it could compromise voter privacy protections. The Justice Department has said it is entitled to the data under federal law, and withholding it interferes with its ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws.

The department has now sued 23 states and Washington, D.C., for declining to voluntarily turn over their voter rolls. Those states, which include some led by officials of both political parties, have generally argued that states are responsible for voter registration and are barred by state and federal law from sharing certain private information about voters. In an interview with “The Charlie Kirk Show” last month, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said 13 states, including Texas, had voluntarily agreed to turn over their voter rolls.

In a letter to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, dated Friday and obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, the Democratic National Committee said the move to hand over the voter roll could violate federal election law.

DNC Chair Ken Martin said the turnover of such data is tantamount to a “big government power grab” and would invite privacy violations and could result in eligible voters being kicked off the rolls. The DNC, he said in a statement, “won’t stand idly by as the Trump DOJ tries to get access to Texas voters’ sensitive information.”

In its letter, Daniel Freeman, the DNC’s litigation director, requested records related to the Justice Department’s request, and warned the party could take further action.

Some election officials and voting rights watchdog groups have raised concerns about what the Justice Department intends to do with the information provided by the states, with some suggesting it may be used to create a national database of voters.

Votebeat and The Texas Tribune have asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for a signed copy of the agreement between the state and the Justice Department, known as a memorandum of understanding, governing how the sharing of the voter data would work and steps the state has agreed to take in response to any questions about voter eligibility raised by the Justice Department. The state has not yet released it.

In a proposed memorandum of understanding sent to Wisconsin officials last month and publicly released by state officials, the Justice Department said that upon receiving the state’s voter data, it would check the state’s voter roll for “list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, anomalies or concerns.” The department would then notify the state and give it 45 days to correct any problems. The state would then agree to resubmit the voter roll to the department. Wisconsin declined the agreement, and the Justice Department has since sued the state.

In his letter to Nelson, Freeman identified two potential legal violations associated with some of those clauses, though acknowledged he didn’t yet know whether Texas had signed such an agreement and asked for records.

Freeman wrote that the 45-day removal period as laid out in the public versions of the memorandum would run afoul of a provision in the National Voter Registration Act that lays out specific conditions, such as having missed two elections after receiving a notice from the state, for states to remove registered voters from the rolls.

Freeman also wrote that federal law also bars states from doing systemic voter removals from the rolls within 90 days of a primary or general election. Because Texas has an upcoming March 3 primary, May 26 runoff and Nov. 3 general election, the state cannot conduct such list maintenance until after the runoff, Freeman wrote. The 90-day moratorium would then kick in again on Aug. 6, ahead of the November election.

Texas agreed to the memorandum of understanding and released the data, but told the department that it did so with the understanding it wouldn’t “limit or affect the duties, responsibilities, and rights” of the state under either the NVRA or other federal laws, according to two letters the Texas Secretary of State’s Office sent the Justice Department in December and released to Votebeat and The Texas Tribune.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

U.S. Justice Department sues Arizona, Connecticut for access to unredacted state voter rolls

2026-01-06T23:38:48+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Arizona on Tuesday after Secretary of State Adrian Fontes declined to turn over the state’s unredacted voter list, the latest in a series of such lawsuits the Trump administration has filed against states around the country.

The Justice Department also filed a similar lawsuit against Connecticut. The agency has said it is asking every state for its unredacted voter lists — unprecedented requests for versions of the voter rolls that contain personally identifying information such as voters’ full birthdates, full or partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information — as part of a Trump administration effort to exercise new oversight over the maintenance of state voter rolls.

Many states, led by officials of both political parties, have refused the Justice Department’s request, generally arguing that states are responsible for voter registration and are barred by state and federal law from sharing certain private information about voters. Election officials and voter watchdog groups have said the effort also appears to represent an attempt to build a national voter roll.

Fontes said on Dec. 19 that he had rejected a request from the Justice Department for the data, the third request he said he had received. Arizona voters “have important privacy rights that cannot be infringed because they choose to exercise their constitutionally protected voting rights,” he said.

The Justice Department has said it is entitled to the data under federal law, and withholding it interferes with its ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws.

“Accurate voter rolls are essential to ensuring that American citizens’ votes count only once, and only with other eligible voters,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement announcing the lawsuits against Arizona and Connecticut.

The agency said in the statement that it has so far sued 23 states that have declined to turn over the lists. It has also sued Washington, D.C.

In an interview with “The Charlie Kirk Show” last month, Dhillon said 13 states are voluntarily turning over their voter rolls.

In the suit against Arizona, the department cited the Civil Rights Act’s requirement for states to turn over certain voting records to the Justice Department upon the attorney general’s request, and also cited the requirement for states to comply with two federal election laws, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

Fontes posted a video on social media responding to the lawsuit and social media posts from a Justice Department lawyer, telling the lawyer to “pound sand.” In a statement Tuesday, Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas said the state follows the law to ensure voters can participate “without fear that their information will be misused or exposed.”

This story has been updated.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

U.S. Justice Department sues WEC for not providing unredacted voter list

2025-12-18T22:42:28+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday after it refused to turn over the state’s unredacted voter list.

The Justice Department has said it is asking every state for its unredacted voter lists — versions of the voter rolls that contain personally identifying information such as voters’ full birthdates, full or partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information.

The Justice Department has so far sued 21 of the states, along with Washington, D.C., that have declined to turn over the lists, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is tracking the lawsuits.

“States need to give us this information, so we can do our duty to protect American citizens from vote dilution,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement, referring to the federal government’s ongoing efforts to find noncitizens on the voter rolls.

In that statement, the DOJ announced that three more states — Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee — agreed to provide the federal government with their full voter lists, joining Indiana and Wyoming.

The lawsuit alleges the election commission and Meagan Wolfe, its administrator, are violating the Civil Rights Act’s requirement for states to turn over certain voting records to the DOJ upon the attorney general’s request.

WEC met on Dec. 11 in response to the federal government’s request for the state’s data, ultimately voting not to provide it. Election officials nationwide, including WEC appointees, have said that providing that information would violate state law.

The Justice Department has said it is entitled to it under federal law, and withholding the data interferes with its ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws.

In a letter WEC sent to the Justice Department Dec. 11 after voting against providing the unredacted voter rolls, election commissioners pointed to a state law that explicitly bans election officials from disclosing information like driver’s license numbers to most people who aren’t election officials.

The commissioners also pointed out that one of the laws that the federal government cited in its request — the National Voter Registration Act — doesn’t apply to Wisconsin, one of six states exempt from it. The letter further argues that the other federal laws that the federal government cited don’t justify the request for confidential voter information.

The lawsuit, unlike the DOJ’s letter to Wisconsin, doesn’t cite the NVRA, solely asking the court to find the refusal to release the list is a Civil Rights Act violation and require the state to release it.

Officials in both Republican and Democratic states have pushed back on the DOJ’s request for unredacted voter data, saying it could put voters at risk. They also say the DOJ hasn’t provided enough information on how the data would be used.

Dhillon said on a podcast that the states were withholding that information because states are embarrassed that their voter rolls were not sufficiently cleared of inactive or unlawful registrants.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin Elections Commission refuses to send Justice Department unredacted voter list

2025-12-12T00:10:17+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday declined to send the state’s unredacted voter rolls to the federal government, joining more than a dozen states pushing back against disclosing sensitive voter information.

The commission’s move comes as the U.S. Department of Justice has asked all 50 states for their voter files — massive lists containing significant personal information on every voter in the country — claiming they are central to its mission of enforcing election law.

“The U.S. DOJ is simply asking the commission to do something that the commission is explicitly forbidden by Wisconsin law to do,” said Don Millis, a Republican appointee on the Wisconsin Elections Commission. “There’s a clear consensus that personally identifiable information is to be protected.”

While pieces of these lists are public, election officials typically redact voters’ Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, and dates of birth before issuing them in response to records requests. The DOJ, in many cases, has asked for information not traditionally made public. That was also the case in Wisconsin: The DOJ requested voters’ partial Social Security numbers, license numbers, and dates of birth.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission — which is made up of three Democrats and three Republicans — ultimately voted in closed session to send the DOJ a letter declining the request for unredacted voter information. Republican commissioner Bob Spindell appeared to be the only member in favor of cooperating with the federal government and said Wisconsin will likely face a lawsuit as a result of the commission’s choice.

The letter, signed by every commissioner except Spindell, says state law “explicitly prohibits” sending the unredacted voter list.

Officials in both Democratic and Republican states have pushed back on disclosing their voter rolls in response to these requests. On a podcast with conservative talk radio host Joe Pags, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said these states were refusing to cooperate because they were embarrassed that their voter rolls were not sufficiently cleared of inactive or unlawful registrants.

Rather, many states, like Colorado, have said the federal government isn’t entitled to unredacted voter information that could put voters at risk. The DOJ, they say, has not provided sufficient explanation for how the data will be used.

In early December, after receiving a memorandum of understanding similar to the one sent to Wisconsin, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told the DOJ to “take a hike,” adding that she “will not help Donald Trump undermine our elections.” The DOJ sued Griswold just over a week later.

All 50 states were asked to turn over their voting rolls, Dhillon said on the podcast: Four states have voluntarily cooperated, 12 are in negotiations, and 14 have been sued by the DOJ over their refusal.

Wisconsin election officials have repeatedly said that federal officials can obtain the publicly available, and therefore redacted, voter roll the same way anybody else can: by purchasing it available online for $12,500.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Michigan Republicans demand Benson share full voter roll with Trump administration — unredacted

2025-10-28T19:31:26+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Nearly two dozen Michigan House Republicans have signed on to a resolution calling for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to share the state’s complete voter rolls with the Trump administration, without redactions of potentially sensitive identifying information.

Michigan is one of several states being sued by the U.S. Justice Department over their refusal to share unredacted voter rolls in response to requests from the agency. Benson shared some of Michigan’s voter roll — the parts accessible to any member of the public — but withheld personal identifying information, such as Social Security numbers.

The GOP-backed resolution, which was debated at a hearing Tuesday in the House Election Integrity Committee, calls for the secretary of state to share an unredacted copy of Michigan’s computerized statewide voter registration list, also known as the qualified voter file, with federal officials.

“It is inconceivable, in fact unconscionable, that the chief election officer in Michigan refuses to comply with our nation’s top law enforcement official,” Rep. Joe Fox, a Republican from Fremont and the sponsor of the resolution, said at the hearing. “Who does she think she is?”

When questioned by Rep. Stephen Wooden, D-Grand Rapids, Fox appeared unaware that the state had already submitted a redacted voter roll to the Justice Department, saying he was “maybe one of the most confused.” After Wooden provided the date that the file was submitted, Fox said he’d look into it.

The committee approved the resolution 6-3 along party lines.

Rep. Rachelle Smit, a Republican from Martin and chair of the committee, said she appreciated the resolution, as Benson “has been obstructing the work of this committee, the work of this legislature.” Smit and the House GOP have been in a fight with Benson’s agency for months over access to election manuals and whether the Department of State is providing information as required by law to the Legislature.

In total, 23 Michigan House Republicans signed on to the resolution.

The resolution was first introduced on Oct. 23. Early the next day, the Michigan Department of State put out a video and a news release arguing that both state and federal law forbids Benson from sharing personal information.

“Why do they want access to your personal information?” Benson asks in the video. “Well, I’ve asked them that. Other secretaries of state, both Democrats and Republicans, have asked them that. They won’t tell us. Nobody — not the president, the DOJ or any other federal agency — has the right to your sensitive, private voter information.”

Benson, who is in her final term as secretary of state, is running for governor. Both polling and fundraising indicate she’s the likely frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

The Privacy Act of 1974 requires the federal government to provide adequate notice for the collection of public information as well as an explanation for how that information will be used. Other state and federal laws may also prevent the release of such information.

The House resolution acknowledges that concern and says the Justice Department has indicated the data will be kept secure. It also points to several other federal laws — the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 — cited by the Justice Department as reasons that Michigan could be obligated to share the data.

Other states have also refused the Trump administration’s requests for complete, unredacted voter rolls, and have been sued by the Justice Department. Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s secretary of the commonwealth, called the request “a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process.” In Maine, the state’s secretary of state told the administration to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine,” an allusion to a similar rebuff years earlier by Mississippi’s then-secretary of state.

The federal lawsuit against Michigan is ongoing, according to court records, with next steps expected in mid-November.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls

2025-09-25T20:24:51+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday sued six states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, New York, New Hampshire, and Minnesota — for what it said was a “failure to produce their statewide voter registration lists upon request.”

What’s the dispute?

The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to several states — and said it will eventually contact every state — asking for copies of their voter lists and for detailed information about how they maintain them. The department has said it’s seeking to enforce requirements in federal law that President Donald Trump has ordered it to prioritize.

Some states have declined to turn over their full voter rolls, arguing that to share personally identifiable information would violate various federal and state laws. Several of the states that were sued Thursday, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, have turned over or directed the department to the publicly available versions of their voter rolls, which exclude sensitive personal information.

What is the plaintiff asking for?

The department is requesting personally identifying information that states don’t usually make public, such as partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. So far, many states, including the six the Justice Department sued Thursday, have declined to provide that information, citing privacy concerns and state law.

The lawsuits, filed in federal court in each of the six states, ask federal judges to force states to provide the voter rolls, including full names, addresses, and either driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of the voters’ Social Security numbers. The lawsuits assert that states are required to provide the information so the Justice Department can assess compliance with federal laws, specifically the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

In addition to the six states that were sued Thursday, the department last week sued Maine and Oregon.

What happens now?

Pennsylvania will “vigorously fight the federal government’s overreach in court,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, said in a statement, calling the department’s request for personal information “unprecedented and unlawful.”

“As Secretary of the Commonwealth, I have an obligation to protect the personal information that Pennsylvania voters entrust us with, and I take that obligation extremely seriously,” he said.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in a statement to Votebeat, said the Justice Department “is trying to get us to turn over the private, personal information of more than 8 million state residents.”

State and federal law both implement strict privacy protections, she said, adding that the federal government has not clearly said how it intends to use the data.

Benson, a Democrat, called the Department’s request an “illegal and unconstitutional power grab.”

In a statement, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said his office had told the Justice Department it could not provide private voter data without “information about how the information will be used and secured.” Instead of providing that, Simon said, the Justice Department sued.

New York state and New Hampshire officials said they’re reviewing the lawsuits and declined to comment. California officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuits.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain state voter rolls:

A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’, Sept. 4, 2025
After delays, Michigan shares limited voter rolls with U.S. Justice Department, Sept. 3, 2025
Pennsylvania rebuffs U.S. request for voter rolls containing personal data, Aug 21, 2025
Michigan says Justice Department silence is stalling effort to turn over voter records, Aug. 26, 2025
Justice Department widens its request for Pennsylvania election information, Aug. 8, 2025
Justice Department presses Texas for list of registered voters, and the officials who check it, Aug. 14, 2025

Update, Sept. 25: This story was updated to include comment from Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and New York state officials.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org. Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat based in Pennsylvania. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

After delays, Michigan shares limited voter rolls with U.S. Justice Department

2025-09-03T18:00:03+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Michigan shared a limited piece of the state’s voter roll with the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday, arguing that sharing any personally identifying information would violate several state and federal laws.

The transfer of data in response to two DOJ requests for the qualified voter file followed a brief delay while Michigan Department of State officials wondered how to securely share the information with the federal government.

“While Michigan will provide QVF voter data, some specific data you request is exempt from disclosure under Michigan Election Law,” Khyla Craine, MDOS’s chief legal officer, wrote in the response letter included with the rolls.

The Justice Department’s initial letter to Michigan requested the voter rolls, a list of election officials responsible for maintaining them, and answers to several questions about the state’s response to a survey conducted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. A subsequent request from the DOJ asked that the rolls also include information such as Social Security numbers.

Additional responses to other questions are forthcoming, Crain wrote.

Crain’s letter explains that sharing personal identifying information would violate the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Driver Privacy Protection Act, two federal laws that dictate how data requested by the federal government can be collected and shared.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Votebeat.

MDOS was able to finally share its roll of more than 8 million voters through the DOJ’s secure file-sharing system, called Justice Enterprise File Sharing system, or JEFS. The system is housed on Box, a commercial file-sharing website. It specializes in secure collaboration, according to the website’s main page.

To share information, MDOS needed federal officials to grant it access to the platform. But an email inviting state officials to collaborate on JEFS did not make clear that the invitation was from the federal government, according to images of the message obtained by Votebeat. The message came from “noreply@box.com” and — aside from a small note at the bottom referencing JEFS — it largely resembled an attempt at phishing, or stealing sensitive information.

Angela Benander, spokesperson for MDOS, told Votebeat last week that the DOJ didn’t alert the department in advance that it would send a Box link. That delayed the transfer of files. She added that the department also needed confirmation from the state’s Department of Technology, Budget and Management that using the link complied with state security policies.

“It would be one thing if they sent an email first to say, ‘Look for this email, it will have a box.com link,’” she said. “But instead, they just sent a random email from a random person with no notification at all.”

Michigan was one of several states that received requests for their complete voter rolls as the Justice Department follows through on President Donald Trump’s executive order to prioritize voter roll maintenance. Some states have complied in a limited way, like Michigan — Pennsylvania, for example, made similar legal arguments — while others, such as Maine, rejected the federal government’s request outright.

Several states that responded did not encounter the same issue with the file transfer as Michigan because they used different methods to share their data. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office, for instance, told Votebeat it transmitted the information using its own in-house file sharing system; Florida officials simply mailed a disk with the files to the DOJ, the same way they would share them with anyone who requested the information, a spokesperson for the office said.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Michigan says Justice Department silence is stalling effort to turn over voter records

2025-08-26T22:41:09+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

The Michigan Department of State is trying to send along a portion of the voter registration data requested by the U.S. Justice Department, but one state official says it’s waiting for the federal government to tell it how.

The state is sending only the part of the voter roll that is accessible to anyone, including names and voting history. It is not including Social Security numbers or other private information, citing federal laws that ban it from sharing that.

But Michigan officials say they can’t send anything if Justice Department officials don’t explain how to securely transfer the records.

The qualified voter file, or QVF, is available to anyone who files a Freedom of Information Act request with the Michigan Department of State. The file is massive — it was nearly three gigabytes when Votebeat last requested it in June, even before including additional documents needed to interpret it — and can be difficult to share. When a member of the public asks for the records, for example, the state provides it in a series of compressed files through its FOIA portal.

The federal government asked for the records to be submitted either by email or through the Justice Department’s file-sharing system. Sending the qualified voter file by email is technically possible, but it’s not secure, and the file size makes it difficult. The Michigan Department of State has been asking the Justice Department since last week how to access its file-sharing system and has received no response, Angela Benander, spokesperson for the Department of State, told Votebeat on Tuesday.

The files, she said, are “ready to go over” as soon as MDOS officials get a username and password.

The Justice Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment from Votebeat.

Communications between the Department of State and the Justice Department show that Khyla Craine, chief legal director for the Department of State, requested information on how to transmit information through the DOJ system. The email, shared with Votebeat, was sent Aug. 21 to Timothy Mellett, a trial attorney with the DOJ’s civil rights division who has been actively involved in other voting-related legal affairs.

Neither Mellett nor any of his colleagues had responded as of Tuesday, Benander said.

“It seems strange that they’re not prepared to help us,” she added.

Other states have also declined to share personally identifying information. Pennsylvania responded to the DOJ similarly last week, offering only its own publicly available file. It is not clear if Pennsylvania had any similar problems sharing its data.

The Justice Department has shown a willingness to sue for access to the more detailed information, as it did in Orange County, California, earlier this summer. But states have argued that sharing the information would be a violation of federal privacy law.

In Michigan, Benander said, lawyers specifically cited the Drivers Protection Privacy Act, which bans states from sharing personal information gathered through the DMV and connected to motor vehicle records. Other laws may also apply, including the Privacy Act of 1974, which requires the federal government to provide a notice of why it is collecting information and how it plans to store it.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania rebuffs U.S. request for voter rolls containing personal data

2025-08-21T22:47:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Pennsylvania told the U.S. Justice Department that it will not give federal officials a version of the state’s voter rolls that contains personal information, rebuffing a request from the agency.

“This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in a letter Thursday responding to the request.

Schmidt, a Republican, said that his department could provide a public version of the voter rolls, known as the Full Voter Export, which contains information such as name, age, address, and vote history, but that it was prohibited by law from providing voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

Earlier this month, the department asked Pennsylvania for a copy of its voter rolls, as well as for information on answers it provided to a national election survey. Last week, the Justice Department sent a follow-up letter to clarify that it was seeking the version of the rolls containing personally identifiable information.

Such letters have gone out to states around the country, and officials have specified recently that the requests include voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

It is unclear how far the Justice Department may be willing to press the issue. It recently sued Orange County, California, in part for redacting driver’s license and Social Security numbers when responding to a department request for voter registration information.

Some local groups have criticized the requests. In a statement Tuesday, Lauren Cristella, president of the Philadelphia-based government watchdog group Committee of Seventy, said that the recent requests from the Justice Department, along with recent statements from President Donald Trump on mail voting clearly seem to be “an attempt to sow doubt in our elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.”

The original letter from federal officials also sought information about answers Pennsylvania gave to the Election Administration and Voting Survey, among other things.

On Monday the Department of State responded to those portions of the letter, in some cases saying the questions appeared to be based on misunderstandings or mistakes about the data.

Read Votebeat and Spotlight PA’s previous coverage on the state’s communication with the Justice Department:

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Justice Department presses Texas for list of registered voters, and the officials who check it

2025-08-14T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas’ top election official has received a U.S. Justice Department request for access to the state’s list of registered voters, another in a series of letters going out to states demanding information about voter rolls and election procedures.

Along with the voter roll, the department’s Aug. 7 letter to Texas asks for information on how the state is complying with federal requirements for voter list maintenance. It specifically requests information on canceled voter records, records of noncitizens removed from the rolls, voter history, and a list of state and local election officials responsible for voter list maintenance since November 2022. The department gave the state 14 days to respond.

Christina Adkins, director of the election division at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat that the state was notified in July that such a request was coming.

Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has been pushing states to turn over voter registration information on the grounds that it’s needed to support enforcement of election law. It has sent similar requests to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Maine, and others.

The information requests are expected ultimately to go to all 50 states. Some experts and state officials have raised concerns over the legality of the effort and whether it could compromise voter privacy protections. Maine state officials declined to turn over the data.

Adkins told a group of Texas election officials during a training session in Round Rock on Tuesday that her agency has been in contact with the Justice Department. She said Texas has informed the department that it can’t yet provide the voter roll, because it’s shifting to an upgraded version of its voter registration management system, known as Texas Election Administration Management, or TEAM.

Most Texas counties use TEAM to manage their voter rolls and have been testing and training on the upgraded system.

“At some point, the state will have to provide that information to the DOJ. But I’m not doing it yet,” Adkins told election officials. “I don’t believe that we have what they’re asking for with respect to this list, because we are in this transition period,” with some registrations still waiting to be processed and work on list maintenance still pending.

Adkins told election officials Tuesday that the state would handle the request from the Justice Department the same way it would a public-records request, as several other states have.

But Justin Levitt — a professor at Loyola Law School and former DOJ official — said the federal government faces a stricter standard in accessing state records than members of the public.

While federal law allows the public to request certain election records, he said, that does not extend to personally identifiable information, which courts have afforded added protection. Sensitive data, such as information about domestic violence survivors or public officials, is also protected under state law, and courts have repeatedly affirmed these limits.

Levitt said several states misinterpret DOJ requests as standard public-records inquiries, but in reality, “what the DOJ can get, in this circumstance, is less” because of restrictions under the Privacy Act of 1974.

That law, he explained, requires the federal government to justify why it is collecting personal data, and explain how it will be stored, and who will have access — with additional safeguards if the data could be matched to other systems in ways that affect federal benefits. If a state believes the data will be used that way, it cannot legally provide it to federal authorities. The Privacy Act also prohibits states from distributing certain data to the federal government unless strict notice and procedural requirements are met, with criminal penalties for violations.

Levitt warned that states that have already handed over their voter rolls “may be abetting a violation of federal law.” and said he believes that with the Justice Department’s information requests framed as they are now, “the federal government is absolutely violating the law.”

The DOJ has said its effort is aimed at enforcing voting rights laws and improving public faith in elections. The agency would not answer questions about the applicability of the privacy act.

Texas Secretary of State officials declined to comment on whether the agency is considering Privacy Act protections as it works to fulfill the request.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Why states should scrutinize the Justice Department’s requests for voter rolls

2025-08-11T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

The U.S. Justice Department has begun asking states to hand over lots of information, including voter rolls, in its campaign to check compliance with federal voting laws. Pennsylvania got an expanded request this week. Eventually, all 50 states will be contacted.

State officials tell Votebeat they are hesitant to respond to the requests, which haven’t provided much explanation of how the data will be used or protected.

Their reluctance makes sense: The requests themselves might violate federal law.

Some states, including Maine, have already said no to the Justice Department’s request. Others are still reviewing them.

The response echoes what we saw in 2017, when a different arm of the Trump administration — the voter fraud commission he appointed to investigate his spurious claims — asked every state for their voter rolls.

That push collapsed quickly after a bipartisan outcry. Mississippi’s then-secretary of state, Republican Delbert Hosemann, famously told the commission it could "go jump in the Gulf of Mexico" (a rebuke that Maine’s secretary of state nodded to this year, when he said the DOJ could "jump in the Gulf of Maine“).

It remains to be seen whether Republican state officials will be more receptive now that 1) time has passed 2) “election integrity” has become a bigger part of their brand, and 3) the request is coming through DOJ channels. But the concerns — vague legal justification, privacy risks, and lack of clarity on data use — remain essentially the same. And this time, states are being asked for a lot more. The letters sent to states include requests for information on everything from noncitizen voter registration to election procedures. In the letter to Colorado, the DOJ asked for basically everything.

The Privacy Act of 1974 lays out strict guidelines for data requests by federal agencies. One key requirement is that agencies must publish a System of Records Notice, a public explanation of what data they’re collecting, why they need it, and how they intend to use and store it.

The law is meant to prevent government overreach and protect individual privacy. Even if the motives for the underlying investigation are legitimate, the process has to be, too.

If the Justice Department is skipping the System of Records step, or not following the rest of the required process, it can erode the already fragile trust that voters and election officials have in the system. And it may be violating federal law.

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. As the Washington Post reported last month, local election officials in Colorado recently reported receiving “murky” and unofficial-seeming requests for access to voting machines. Some of those requests even claimed to be from federal authorities, though they offered no documentation to back that up. Like the DOJ’s voter roll push, these requests appear designed to test the limits of what election officials will agree to.

Once the government crosses the line into sweeping, unexplained grabs for voter data and more, it’s hard to walk it back. If states cave to these requests without demanding a clear legal foundation, they are inviting future administrations to make more such requests. And next time, it’ll be even harder to say no.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Justice Department widens its request for Pennsylvania election information

2025-08-08T18:15:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

The U.S. Justice Department is asking Pennsylvania to turn over its complete voter rolls, a request that appears to encompass voters’ personal information, including Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

The request, which Pennsylvania officials received in a letter this week, is part of a recent push to get states to turn over voter registration information, which the federal government says is aimed at enforcing election law.

But one expert told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that the federal government is likely asking for more information than it needs, and that it would be potentially illegal for states to turn over this kind of personal data.

The letter, sent to Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt on Aug. 4, was first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer. It asks the state for a copy of its voter rolls — which it had not requested in its previous communications with Pennsylvania about election security — as well as information on the state’s answer to a survey about election administration.

“We write to you as the chief election official for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to

request information regarding the Commonwealth’s procedures for complying with the statewide voter registration list maintenance provisions of the National Voter Registration Act,” the letter said.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in California and former civil rights official in the Justice Department, said he thinks the request oversteps the federal government’s authority.

The letter cites the National Voter Registration Act, which provides for voter registration information to be public. But the law doesn’t say that “all fields” in the voter rolls can be made public, as the letter requests.

Pennsylvania’s voter rolls are available online and can be downloaded for $20, although that version does not contain personal information such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers. Levitt noted that courts have repeatedly ruled that the law doesn’t require the release of private information.

Levitt said the Justice Department doesn’t need specific voters’ information, as the letter requests, to ensure that states are complying with the NVRA.

“Knowing whether or not Justin Levitt is on the rolls and Justin Levitt’s Social Security number tells you nothing about whether a state has a general program of list maintenance,” he said.

The Justice Department recently sued Orange County, California, in part for redacting driver’s license and Social Security numbers in responding to a department request for voter registration information. Releasing those parts of the voter rolls has also been met with legal resistance in the past in Pennsylvania, based on privacy concerns.

Levitt said another issue with the letter is that the department has not disclosed publicly or to Congress why it is seeking this data, which it is required to do under the Privacy Act of 1974.

In a statement to Votebeat and Spotlight PA, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said clean voter rolls and election safeguards are “requisites for free, fair, and transparent elections.”

“The DOJ Civil Rights Division has a statutory mandate to enforce our federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the voting public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration,” the statement said.

The letter from federal officials also seeks information about some answers from Pennsylvania to the Election Administration and Voting Survey. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission conducts that survey of election officials every two years to collect data on various aspects of election administration, including list maintenance.

Previously reported communications between the Justice Department and Pennsylvania did not mention EAVS data, but the Aug. 4 letter asks Schmidt to explain the state’s survey responses, including why it reported fewer-than-average duplicate registrations and why so few voter registration applications came from military recruitment offices.

Additionally the letter asks for the voting history of any noncitizen, person with felony conviction, or individual deemed incompetent who was removed from the rolls since the 2022 midterm election.

The letter asked the Department of State to respond within 14 days. As of Thursday evening, a spokesperson for the department said it had not yet responded.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Michigan becomes latest target of Justice Department inquiry on voter roll maintenance

2025-07-24T00:06:14+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

The U.S. Justice Department is asking Michigan for a copy of its voter rolls and information about how the state maintains them, as well as a series of questions about its high levels of voter registration.

In its letter to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, dated July 21 and obtained by Votebeat, the Justice Department also said it has received a complaint about the state’s compliance with a provision in federal law requiring all voters to be assigned unique identifiers.

It is the latest in a series of letters the Justice Department has sent to states about their management of voter rolls, following directives in President Donald Trump’s March executive order on elections.

The DOJ included a series of questions based on Michigan’s responses to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and Voting Survey, a compendium of data about election administration. The survey was released June 30.

Angela Benander, spokesperson for Michigan’s Department of State, said the department was reviewing the letter. In a text message to Votebeat, Benander said state officials “don’t accept the premise that we are somehow in violation” of the Help America Vote Act, the statute the Justice Department said was the subject of the complaint.

“These issues have been in federal court and two judges have ruled in our favor,” Benander said, referring to past lawsuits over the state’s voter list maintenance.

Republicans at all levels of government have long questioned the high rate of registration in Michigan, which has made registration easier in recent years by allowing same-day registration and automatically registering any eligible person who gets a driver’s license, for example.

Before the 2024 election, a misleading claim circulated saying that Michigan had more registered voters than residents 18 and older. That claim didn’t account for inactive voters who have likely died, moved, or otherwise become ineligible, but whose names can’t legally be removed from the rolls until a certain amount of time has passed.

As for some of the other questions in the letter, Charles Stewart, a political science professor and director of MIT’s Election Lab, said that they don’t necessarily indicate the state has done anything wrong. Duplicate registrations, for example, could be easily attributed to the way a state handles data or any of a number of other “pretty anodyne explanations,” Stewart said.

He said it’s possible that Michigan needs to improve its list maintenance practices but said the Justice Department letter “treats the EAVS data as gospel without really understanding well what the data-generating process is.”

“There is not necessarily an error so much as there’s 55 different ways of generating these numbers,” he said of EAVS. “There’s not a standard ... which all election departments are required to follow.”

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

U.S. Justice Department peppers state election officials with data requests to enforce Trump directives

2025-07-17T16:15:15+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The U.S. Department of Justice has unnerved some state election officials by issuing sweeping requests for information that it says is pertinent to enforcing federal election laws and investigating voting crimes, which President Donald Trump has identified as priorities.

In letters sent to at least a dozen states over the past two months, according to documents obtained by Votebeat and reported elsewhere, the department asked for varied sets of data and records, including voter rolls, information on potential election and voting crimes, data from past elections, and details about procedures for maintaining voter lists and checking voters’ eligibility.

State officials say privately that they have been struck by the scope of the requests and uncertainty around what the administration plans to do with the information, and have been talking to one another about them. Many of these officials have faced years of near-constant scrutiny as Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of election malfeasance, and the president has tried to use his influence and official authority to rewrite the history of his 2020 election loss.

While the requests so far are mostly for data or procedures that are public information or accessible by law to the Justice Department, election law experts said, some of them were more questionable.

Bryan Sells, a voting rights lawyer who worked at the Justice Department during the Obama administration, said federal law has long given the department the right to access some state data related to voter registrations, and it’s not uncommon or improper for it to use that power.

“But I think the question I had after reading these emails is whether what they’re really looking for goes beyond what Congress allowed for,” he said.

For example, the Justice Department sent Michigan and Arizona officials emails asking for information on “individuals who have registered to vote or have voted in your state despite being ineligible to vote.” That request arguably falls within the department’s purview, Sells said. But a request for information on people “who may otherwise have engaged in unlawful conduct relevant to the election process” is broad and might not be.

Kory Langhofer, a Republican lawyer who has been counsel for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign in Arizona, said that it’s fair to be cautious, or even skeptical of broad data requests from the federal government.

But Langhofer said, “I don’t think it’s reasonable to say the sky is falling, because the information requested here is already in the hands of both the state and federal governments,” if not necessarily the Justice Department specifically.

President’s executive order stressed election law enforcement

The information requests are another example of the Justice Department’s shift in enforcement priorities under the Trump administration toward finding and prosecuting election crimes, something the president explicitly called on the attorney general to do in a March executive order on elections.

Federal courts have blocked key provisions of the order from going into effect, but the Justice Department and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission have begun taking steps to implement some other provisions that are still in force.

That appears to be the goal of a recent round of Justice Department correspondence to key swing states including Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. In emails obtained by Votebeat, the department asks for a call with a goal of setting up an agreement to share information on election crimes, such as individuals providing false information on registration forms or registering to vote when they are ineligible.

“With your cooperation, we plan to use this information to enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in at least two such emails.

Trump’s executive order instructs the Justice Department to attempt to establish such information-sharing agreements with states, and orders it to “prioritize enforcement of Federal election integrity laws” in any state that declines to do so, as well as consider withholding federal grants to such states.

The Justice Department declined to comment for this story.

Michigan’s Department of State said it is reviewing the request. Officials in Pennsylvania said that they met with Justice Department officials and that “the discussion was consistent with our longstanding cooperation with our federal partners to protect the integrity of elections.”

JP Martin, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, said the office is “dealing with DOJ in a good faith manner while ensuring we are following the letter of federal and state laws.”

States receive requests for voter rolls

Meanwhile, several states are receiving Justice Department requests for their voter rolls, and information about voter roll cleaning. They include Wisconsin, where the department asked in June for a copy of its voter rolls, along with responses to several questions about voter registration activities, in response to complaints the department said it had received about possible violations of federal voting law. Eight other states received similar requests, the Washington Post reported.

Wisconsin election officials directed the department to an online portal where the public version of the voter rolls could be purchased for $12,500.

Trump’s executive order also directs the Homeland Security Department to review “publicly available” versions of the voter lists “alongside Federal immigration databases … for consistency with Federal requirements.”

The DOJ requests are presumably an attempt to “gather all the relevant data in one place, conduct an authoritative study, and put these issues to rest,” Langhofer said, referring to questions Republicans have repeatedly raised about whether ineligible voters are casting ballots.

“It is important to know that our voters are citizens and residents, and are not voting in more than one jurisdiction,” he said in a text message. “If there is a problem in one of those areas, we should fix it — and if there is *not* a problem there, people should know that our system works well.”

But election officials appear to be concerned, said David Becker, an election lawyer who previously worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and now leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

The recent communications from the department are “odd at the least, and it is an intentional rebalancing of the federal-state dynamic at worst,” Becker said.

Earlier this week, in response to calls from election officials about the Justice Department’s requests, Becker hosted a conference call that was attended by more than 350 state and local election officials from 33 states, which he said is a reflection of the anxiety about possible federal overreach.

Becker noted that the letters followed a series of aggressive administration actions on elections since Trump returned to office, including a lawsuit against Orange County, California, over access to voter data, and a presidential directive demanding an investigation into Chris Krebs, the nation’s former top cybersecurity official. Krebs angered Trump in 2020 by contradicting his assertion that his election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.

“All of these seem designed not to create a viable election policy, but to lay the groundwork to claim the 2026 and 2028 elections are stolen, just as the president did with the 2020 and 2022 elections,” Becker said. “And the troubling part is, it seems now the White House is prepared to use the full weight of the government to spread those claims.”

Votebeat reporters Hayley Harding and Alexander Shur contributed to this report.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org. Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

U.S. Justice Department presses Pennsylvania for answers on how it manages voter rolls

2025-07-09T20:26:45+00:00

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking Pennsylvania for a wide range of information on how it manages voter registration and voter rolls, as part of what it calls “nationwide efforts” to monitor compliance with a key federal voting statute.

In a June 23 letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, the department asked for 14 categories of information on the state’s voter registration activities, including how voters are added to and removed from the voter roll, and how the state prevents unauthorized access to its system.

Votebeat and Spotlight PA obtained a copy of the letter, which was signed by Maureen Riordan, the new acting chief of the voting section in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

The letter is the latest in a series of requests the Civil Rights Division has sent to states involving their compliance with federal voting statutes. This one specifically cites the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, a 2002 law that overhauled voter registration and election administration.

Riordan requested a response within 30 days. Amy Gulli, spokesperson for Pennsylvania’s Department of State, said that the agency intended to respond, but hadn’t done so as of Wednesday.

David Becker, an election lawyer who previously worked in the Civil Rights Division and now leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, noted that nearly all of the requests for information cited specific sections of HAVA to justify them, except for one asking for the process the state uses to identify and remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.

“That’s because there isn’t one, and DOJ has no jurisdiction to request that data,” he said in a text message.

Becker said the request otherwise didn’t raise any specific concerns.

Arizona, Colorado, and Wisconsin election officials have also received letters from the Justice Department, each one with a different set of requests or allegations.

A letter sent in May to Arizona’s Secretary of State Adrian Fontes alleged that the state was not properly verifying voters’ identities as required by HAVA, and threatened a lawsuit, Votebeat reported in June. Fontes, a Democrat, responded that state election officials conduct a complete residency and citizenship check and fully comply with HAVA.

A letter from early June sent to the Wisconsin Elections Commission said the state was not properly resolving administrative complaints as required under HAVA; the commission has been summarily dismissing HAVA complaints that are about the agency’s own actions, based on a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion. Colorado received a letter from the department in May asking Colorado for “all records” related to the 2024 election in response to a complaint the department had received.

The Justice Department also recently sued North Carolina over allegations that it had failed to maintain an accurate voter list as required by HAVA, and sued Orange County, California, over an alleged failure to provide some records related to the removal of noncitizens from its voter rolls.

The letter to Pennsylvania does not mention any complaint, or assert the state has done anything wrong. “We very much appreciate your cooperation in our nationwide efforts to monitor HAVA compliance,” it concludes.

A spokesperson with the Justice Department declined to comment.

The New York Times reported on July 2 that senior officials in the Justice Department are exploring whether they can criminally charge election officials for not sufficiently safeguarding their computer systems.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.