DOJ Files Lawsuits Against 4 More States Over Voter Data

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday filed a lawsuit against Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Nevada over what it said was a failure to produce voting registration data when it was requested.

In a news release, the department said it has brought 18 such lawsuits in total against different states and one locality, specifically targeting Fulton County, Georgia, over the county’s 2020 election records.

The attorney general’s office “has the Civil Rights Act of 1960 at her disposal to demand the production, inspection, and analysis of the statewide voter registration lists,” Friday’s news release said.

“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement on Friday. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”

Two of the four Democratic-leaning states that were sued by the Justice Department responded in critical terms.

Colorado Attorney General Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said in a statement that the state “will not hand over Coloradans’ sensitive voting information.”

“I will continue to protect our elections and democracy, and look forward to winning this case,” Griswold said.

Her office sent a letter, signed by 10 attorneys general in total, that pushed back on recent DOJ requests for voter information. Attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington signed the letter.

“This lawsuit is simply another example of the Trump Department of Justice’s campaign to intimidate states into handing over the personal information of their voters to the federal government,” Democratic Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin told the Democracy Docket, a self-described progressive news platform, in response to the lawsuit.

He added that the DOJ has not given the state a “meaningful justification for needing access to every Massachusetts voter’s personally identifiable information.”

During an interview published this week, Dhillon told CNN host and podcaster Scott Jennings that more DOJ lawsuits are on the way. They include Georgia and Maine, she said.

Dhillon said that her office is asking for the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers and that the concerns about the government having access to personal data are overblown.

“By the way, the federal government issued that number, so we kind of have it,” Dhillon told Jennings. “The cat is out of the bag on their Social Security number. It’s not secret from the federal government. It’s just dumb.”

In a Sept. 22 letter to the Justice Department, Hawaii Deputy Solicitor General Thomas Hughes said state law requires that all personal information required on a voter registration form other than a voter’s full name, voting district or precinct, and voter status must be kept confidential.

Hughes also said the federal law cited by the Justice Department doesn’t require states to turn over electronic registration lists, nor does it require states to turn over “uniquely or highly sensitive personal information” about voters.

The Epoch Times contacted the office of Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.