DEMOCRACY WATCHIn Bid for Voter Data, Trump’s DOJ Lays Groundwork to Undermine Confidence in Midterms
The U.S. Department of Justice has begun connecting its push to obtain sensitive personal data on millions of voters to whether the upcoming midterm elections will be fair and secure, laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to cast doubt on the results. DOJ says state rolls are needed to ensure fairness of elections.
The U.S. Department of Justice has begun connecting its push to obtain sensitive personal data on millions of voters to whether the upcoming midterm elections will be fair and secure, laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to potentially cast doubt on the results.
The Justice Department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia over their refusal to provide unredacted voter rolls that include the driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers of voters. The department has lost three of those lawsuits so far this year.
But as the Justice Department begins appealing the losses, it has filed emergency motions warning the “security and sanctity of elections” would be questioned in those states — California, Michigan and Oregon — without immediate rulings.
Election experts told Stateline that federal appellate courts are unlikely to move quickly for the Justice Department. Instead, the department’s court filings suggest that without the data, the Trump administration may question the validity of the midterm elections in November.
“Absent a final Court determination on this matter there is no other process to ensure a fair election in 2026,” the Trump administration’s motions say.
President Donald Trump has made identifying noncitizen voting, an extremely rare occurrence, a priority of his administration, and the Justice Department has said the detailed personal data is necessary to ensure states are properly maintaining their voter rolls. At least a dozen Republican-led states have provided the information.
Democratic election officials, and some Republicans, have condemned the demands as an invasion of voters’ privacy and have voiced concerns the Trump administration plans to use the information to target political opponents or create a national voter list. Other Republican election officials and the Trump administration and have downplayed privacy concerns and said the data will help ensure only eligible voters cast ballots.
The DOJ’s sense of urgency comes after the department spent months sending letters to state officials demanding voter data, followed by successive rounds of lawsuits against states that refused to comply — all in what department officials said was the pursuit of noncitizen voters.
