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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.
