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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.
