ELECTION INTERGITYJustice Department Demand for State Voter Lists Underscores Their Importance
DOJ is demanding that states turn over their voter registration lists and other election information, citing unspecified concerns with voter list maintenance. Power over voter registration lists is the power to shape the electorate.
Alabama resident Roald Hazelhoff treasures his newly won right to vote. When election officials flagged the naturalized U.S. citizen’s voter registration for possible removal last August, the Dutch native fought back.
Hazelhoff, then a 67-year-old college instructor, sued to stop Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, from seeking to kick him and more than 3,200 other registered voters off the rolls. The lawsuit was part of a multifront legal challenge led by him and three other voters, along with voting rights groups and the Biden-era U.S. Department of Justice.
A federal judge halted Alabama’s effort within weeks — and Hazelhoff voted in his first presidential election last November without incident.
Ten months later, Hazelhoff is watching with deep concern as the Department of Justice, in President Donald Trump’s second term, is demanding that states turn over their voter registration lists and other election information, citing unspecified concerns with voter list maintenance.
“My initial reaction was of sadness that this could happen but that still a mistake could be made,” Hazelhoff, who lives in the Birmingham area, told Stateline. “Now, I’m more in a stance of saying this is the most fundamental right afforded to citizens of the United States, and I am a legal citizen of this country and I will fight for that right.”
The Trump administration’s effort to scoop up voter registration lists and other information from a growing number of states underscores how state-controlled voter lists are a major battleground in fights over access to the polls. The Justice Department told the National Association of Secretaries of State that it will eventually contact all states, an association spokesperson wrote in an email.
Minnesota, New Hampshire and Wisconsin have so far declined to provide full voter registration lists to the department amid questions over the legality of the requests and uncertainty over how the information will be used. Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows plans to deny a similar request, telling the Maine Morning Star that federal officials can “go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”
The Justice Department declined a Stateline request for comment.
