Over one-quarter of the U.S. Senate sign letter demanding an end to Trump Administration’s nationwide pursuit of protected voter information
WASHINGTON D.C. (KEYT) – On Thursday, California's Senators signed onto a letter to Attorney General Pamela Bondi demanding an end to the Department of Justice's lawsuits seeking the personal information of voters in 24 states which a federal judge characterized earlier this month as, "unprecedented and illegal" when dismissing the suit.
"The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks an unprecedented amount of personal information related to California voters from California’s unredacted voting rolls," explained Federal district Judge David O. Carter in his dismissal. "The requested information includes the names, social security numbers, home addresses, voting history and other sensitive information of nearly 23 million Californians."
"The government's request is unprecedented and illegal," Judge Carter added.
The U.S. Constitution states in Article I, Section 4 that decisions regarding, "the times, places, and manner of holding Elections" are delegated to Congress and managed by each state.
The Section does not mention any executive branch position, office, or department.
"[T]he States are merely an "agent" for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them," argued President Trump in a Truth Social post on Aug. 18, 2025. "Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS. I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS. THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!!"
On March 25, 2025, President Trump signed election-focused Executive Order "Preserving and Protecting The Integrity of American Elections" tasking various parts of the federal government with making sweeping changes to elections nationwide.
"We write to urge the Department of Justice (the Department or DOJ) to stop its intensifying pressure campaign to coerce states into handing over their voter rolls, which include voters’ personally identifiable information (PII), in apparent violation of federal law," opened Thursday's letter signed by 28 Senators. "We strongly oppose the Department’s lawsuits against states, which are unauthorized attempts to centralize this data, that in addition to posing serious risks to voter privacy, data security, and national security, also invite unwarranted voter roll purges and undermine state and local election officials’ list maintenance efforts."
The Senator's letter came after the Attorney General explicitly linked complying with the demand for voter information in a January 24 letter to Minnesota Governor Walz as the third condition of a potential reduction of a targeted enforcement operation by federal law enforcement personnel in the state.
"[A]llow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960," stated the Attorney Genera's letter to Governor Walz. "Do not obstruct federal immigration enforcement; do not allow rioters to take over the streets and houses of worship; do not hinder federal officials from investigating financial fraud and violations of election laws. Whether state and local politicians stand in the way or not, we will work every day to protect Americans and make Minnesota Safe Again."
"The answer to Attorney General Bondi’s request is no. Her letter is an outrageous attempt to coerce Minnesota into giving the federal government private data on millions of U.S. Citizens in violation of state and federal law. This comes after repeated and failed attempts by the DOJ to pressure my office into providing the same data," wrote Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon in a statement the following day. "Our position on the federal government’s request to access Minnesota voting records starts and ends with the law. The law does not give the federal government the authority to obtain this private data. Minnesota is not alone in declining to disclose sensitive personal data on voters."
"It is deeply disturbing that the U.S. Attorney General would make this unlawful request a part of an apparent ransom to pay for our state’s peace and security," added Secretary of State Simon.
"[T]he right to vote was won through generations of sacrifices from marginalized communities the American political system devalued, but who were determined to make the promise of democracy real," shared Judge Carter in his dismissal of the Department of Justice's lawsuit. "The pieces of legislation at issue in this litigation were not passed as an unrestricted means for the Executive to collect highly sensitive information about the American people. It is not for the Executive, or even this Court to authorize the use of civil rights legislation as a tool to forsake the privacy rights of millions of Americans. That power belongs solely to Congress."
Since May of last year, the Department of Justice has requested voter information from at least 44 states and Washington D.C. according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Minnesota and California are two of the 24 states refusing to turn over that information.
While ten states have provided full statewide voter registration lists, including the nation's second most populous state, 23 states and Washington D.C. have not.
The image from the Brennan Center for Justice, breaks down state compliance with the Department of Justice's changes to federal elections. States shaded in yellow are being sued for not turning over voter information, states in green have not provided voter registrations, states in blue have only provided publicly available voter lists, and states in red have provided full voter registration information.
North Dakota is in orange because it has received a request from the Justice Department to schedule a meeting about sharing its voter registration information.
"The unauthorized nature of these lawsuits was exposed by your January 24 letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz seeking voter rolls as a condition to ending the dangerous recent deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents to the state that has cost two innocent Americans their lives," noted Thursday's letter to the Attorney General. "This letter marked an unacceptable escalation of DOJ’s campaign to centralize state voter rolls and sensitive personal information under its control. It is also the clearest admission that the Department knows it lacks authority to obtain state voter rolls and is instead resorting to strong arm tactics and intimidation by force."
In October, a class action lawsuit, League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, filed in federal court in Washington D.C., sought to halt the requests for voter information as well as the use of an existing federal database to double check state's voter registrations.
The database, known as the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, is a decades-old tool for state and federal agencies to verify citizenship status for people looking to access government programs or licenses.
"While most states are resisting this illegal voter roll grab, we are gravely concerned by the amount of sensitive data the Department has already amassed on millions of American voters," Thursday's letter to the Attorney General detailed. "The Department has failed to provide Congress, or the public, any information on how it is maintaining this vast amount of data, the guardrails in place to protect state voter information, how the data is to be used, or who in the federal government has access to this sensitive data."
Several states established new agreements with the federal government to expand the use of the SAVE database or announced its use to purge voter rolls, and the Department of Homeland Security made millions of dollars in election security funding for states dependent on the use of the database and compliance with submitting state information to the federal government.
"Where's that data going? And at the end of the day, is it stored? What are they going to do with it? Who has access? Is it shared?" pondered Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson. "I don't want to do something that I don't necessarily have the ability to do without legislative authority. So we just want to be very clear on that before we move forward."
"We encourage states with questions to work with their state election offices for basic implementation requirements," shared the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which manages the election security grant program. "If any state is not found to be compliant, we reserve the right to withhold funding or terminate the grants."
"The Department of Homeland Security is trying to back-door changes to our election laws," stated Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows after denying about $130,000 in election security funding last year. "DHS [Department of Homeland Security] can't require us to use that system."
One notable change made last year to the conditions for states to access federal election security funding also included the removal of language that prohibited the use of the federal funds, "to suppress voter registration or turnout".
Information gathered by the Trump Administration about Americans has already been shared with outside groups with an eye towards voter rolls without proper authorization.
"Just last week, DOJ admitted in court pleadings that rogue DOGE employees at the Social Security Administration (SSA) entered into a secret agreement to share SSA data unlawfully with an outside group for election-related purposes," noted Thursday's letter. "The Department owes Congress and the public an explanation of what it plans to do with state voter roll data in its possession and what safeguards are in place to prevent further unauthorized misuse."
Thursday's letter concluded, "Due to the unprecedented nature of these actions by DOJ and the very real threat to the voting rights of millions of Americans voters, we seek written responses to these questions and those posed in the November 6, 2025, letter no later than February 12, 2026. In addition, we request a briefing on the Department’s activities regarding state voter rolls provided for Senate Rules and Judiciary Committees and Senators’ offices in states that are the subject of DOJ litigation on or before February 26, 2026."
So far, federal judges in California and Oregon have dismissed the Department of Justice's lawsuits.
"These nationwide efforts point at a larger pattern than the DOJ’s stated purpose—one that involves collecting sensitive, personally identifying information of nearly every voter in America on an unprecedented scale and then utilizing that information in a completely different context than what the information was provided for," noted Judge Carter in his dismissal. "The taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left. The case before the Court is one of these cuts that imperils all Americans."
