States fighting DOJ over voter data access

Bart Jansen

USA TODAY

Anthony Nel was surprised when his voter registration was revoked in Texas after he cast an early ballot for the November 2025 election. The Denton County resident was born in South Africa in1996 and became a U.S. citizen in 2013 when his parents were naturalized. But he got a letter from the county registrar, who had checked the names on voter lists against a Department of Homeland Security database that stated he was “not a United States citizen.”

Nel was able to prove his citizenship and reclaim his voter registration by providing his passport in December. But he joined a lawsuit the advocacy group Common Cause filed against the Trump administration because of concern federal authorities would unfairly revoke the voting rights of others.

“Seeing that right being taken away from people who are supposed to have it is incredibly frustrating and aggravating,” Nel told USA TODAY. “I have the right to vote and they attempted to take that away from me.”

Dozens of legal battles are being waged nationwide over federal access to personal information about voters, as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to weed out immigrants who are in the country illegally, while civil rights advocates fight for privacy.

By determining who gets dropped from voter registration lists, the results of the cases will help determine who casts ballots in November midterm elections, which in turn will decide who leads the narrowly divided Congress.

The Department of Justice has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for voter lists, which include driver’s license and Social Security numbers, in the hunt for fraud by ineligible voters. The department has argued courts shouldn’t second-guess the reasons for searching the voter rolls.

“Nothing in [the Civil Rights Act] purports to authorize courts to secondguess the sufficiency or sincerity of the Attorney General’s statement,” federal lawyers led by Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in one filing. “Indeed, the statute provides no meaningful standards that would permit such judicial review.”

But civil rights groups say the federal government has no role in managing elections under the Constitution. The personal information at stake from hundreds of millions of Americans is what privacy experts call the “trifecta” for identity theft.

Nel is part of a lawsuit civil rights groups filed against the DOJ on April 21 in an attempt to block the collection and review of those records in at least 12 states that provided the data voluntarily.

Five federal courts have dismissed the DOJ’s demands for the records from California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island. One judge called the effort “unprecedented and illegal.”

But three appeals have oral arguments scheduled in May about the Justice Department’s contention that federal oversight of state voter lists is crucial to prevent fraud.

What does the DOJ want?

The DOJ has requested voter lists with personal information that is traditionally kept confidential by the states, including driver’s license numbers and the final four digits of Social Security numbers.

In some states, the voter data includes party affiliation and the history of when voters cast ballots.

The DOJ contends it has the authority to ask for voter lists to prevent fraud under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help Americans Vote Act.

The DOJ said it wants to compare voter lists against the DHS Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements to confirm whether voters are U.S. citizens.

The department has also acknowledged that third-party contractors would handle the data.

Some of the reasons the department sought the voter lists are because the federal Election Administration and Voting Survey found lower-than-average removals from voting lists in targeted states such as California, Oregon and Michigan. The survey found 95% of Oregon’s voting-age population registered, which raised red flags in a state where every voter is mailed a ballot.

“The DOJ cannot verify whether Oregon is accurately maintaining its lists unless it can distinguish voters on those lists who may have the same name, or address, or other aspect of the limited information provided on the public lists,” federal lawyers said in one filing.

States’ lawyers: System ‘flawed’

States contend the federal government has no role in managing elections and federal judges agreed.

The U.S. Constitution says, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the Legislature.”

Civil rights lawyers say the statutes the DOJ cites allow for the investigation of specific allegations of fraud, but not blanket demands for all of a state’s voter records.

The lawyers also contend the SAVE system is “flawed” and “faulty” to scrutinize voter rolls because citizens born outside the United States who have become naturalized are at higher risk of being identified as noncitizens, which imperils their right to vote.

“It’s not that there is some perfect list,” Theresa Lee, a senior lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union participating in some of the cases, told USA TODAY. “It’s that there are many eligible

The Department of Justice contends it has the authority to ask for voter lists to prevent fraud under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help Americans Vote Act.

MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES FILE

people who will be swept up.”

Voters fear loss of rights

Voters like Nel have joined lawsuits aiming to prevent a federal review of their voter registration.

Julia Sanches, who works as a translator, was born in Sao Paolo but became a naturalized U.S. citizen in July 2020 specifically so she could register and vote in that year’s election.

“I am concerned that the current presidential administration will try to suppress my vote,” Sanches said in a filing against the department’s demand for voter lists from Rhode Island. “I want to exercise my rights as a citizen, but I am worried that some in power do not share my views on the rights of naturalized citizens.”

Stuart Waldman said he changed his registration as part of getting a new driver’s license when he moved to Rhode Island from New York in May 2024 to be closer to his son and granddaughter. But he worried about losing his registration if federal authorities cross-checked the two state lists “improperly or incorrectly.” “I would be outraged if I was removed from voter registration simply because I moved to a new state,” Waldman said.

Trump: ‘Nationalize’ elections

The DOJ’s lawsuits are part of Trump’s effort to “nationalize” elections to prevent fraud. He has long pushed the false claim that the 2020 election was “rigged” and his loss to President Joe Biden resulted from widespread voter fraud.

“The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump told Dan Bongino’s podcast in February.

Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s voting section, said during a March 26 hearing that the administration wanted that information to ensure Rhode Island’s voter list is “clean” and flag anyone who should be purged.

The administration has targeted election records in three swing states Trump lost in 2020. The FBI searched the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, for 2020 records. The DOJ subpoenaed election records from Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix.

The DOJ has also demanded 2024 ballots from Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit.

“The U.S. Constitution puts states in charge of elections, not the federal government,” said Cheri Hardmon, spokesperson for the Michigan secretary of state. “That’s the law.”

Trump has also urged Congress to approve legislation requiring identification to vote and proof of citizenship to register.

The House approved the legislation, but it stalled in the Senate due to a lack of bipartisan support to overcome a filibuster “NO MORE RIGGED ELECTIONS!” Trump said in a social media post March 17, urging approval of the bill.

Info could enable ID thieves

Civil rights advocates contend that storing the sensitive data about hundreds of millions of voters in a single federal system creates a greater risk of targeting by hackers and foreigners trying to undermine elections and data security.

“Having a name and address, and then an identification number like a driver’s license number or Social Security number, is what they call the trifecta to able to commit identity theft,” said Lee, the ACLU lawyer. “People shouldn’t have to be put at risk of really serious consequences when they have given their information to state officials in order to be able to access the ballot.”

The DOJ acknowledged in a court filing Jan. 16 that members of a Trump advisory group, which he called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, got access to Social Security Administration information in March 2025 while searching for “waste, fraud and abuse” despite previous denials.

An unnamed political advocacy group asked two DOGE members working with Social Security information to analyze state voter rolls with a goal of finding “voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States,” the DOJ said in the filing.

The agency hadn’t reviewed or approved the agreement the DOGE member signed with the advocacy group and only learned about it in November. The agency asked the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in December to review two potential violations of the Hatch Act, which restricts the political activities of federal workers.

Omar Noureldin, Common Cause’s senior vice president of policy and litigation, said the author George Orwell warned about such “Big Brother” government surveillance in his book “1984.” Noureldin said the government could wield the lists to analyze who voted for and against candidates, potentially targeting individuals and voting blocs.

“It’s huge. This places a huge target on this information,” Noureldin told USA TODAY. “Hackers and foreign malign actors who would want to interfere in our election systems or just get large amounts of data that they could use for scams or a host of other bad purposes.”

Judge: DOJ effort ‘illegal’

Federal judges in five states found the DOJ had no authority to demand the voter lists without specific allegations of fraud against individual voters. The department’s demands could discourage people from registering and voting, judges said.

“The government’s request is unprecedented and illegal,” U.S. District Judge David Carter in Los Angeles said in his decision Jan. 15. “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.”

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island found no factual allegations that the state was violating the law in maintaining its voter list.

She said April 17 that the statutes the DOJ cited don’t authorize “the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here.”

U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai in Oregon echoed other judges in calling the effort to check voter lists as part of immigration enforcement “chilling” in his ruling Feb. 5.

“The possibility that Oregon’s voter registration list could be used to further these efforts in the absence of congressional action, may very well lead to an erosion of voting rights and voter participation,” he wrote.

Arguments slated in 3 cases

Three of the DOJ’s appeals of federal rulings in the voter-data cases are scheduled to soon have oral arguments.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the Michigan case May 13. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the California and Oregon cases May 19.

Federal lawyers said judges made mistakes in dismissing the cases by arguing the Civil Rights Act granted the attorney general access to local voting records.

Irregularities in the maintenance of voter lists “were ample basis for the DOJ to assess that it was appropriate to ‘investigate the possible violation’ of California’s recordkeeping,” the lawyers argued in one filing.

The DOJ is “carrying out one of its functions,” which is “assessing and ensuring compliance with federal elections statutes,” the lawyers said in a California filing. “Nothing in [the Civil Rights Act] purports to authorize courts to second-guess the sufficiency or sincerity of the Attorney General’s statement.”

But states argued the federal lawyers were misrepresenting the statutes they cited.

The Civil Rights Act, which was enacted to remedy a history of denying the right to vote based on race, allows for inspection of voter-registration records but doesn’t overturn state privacy laws, according to civil rights lawyers.

The National Voter Registration Act directs states “to ensure that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained.”

And the Help America Vote Act provides for a computerized state voter roll but leaves implementation “to the discretion of the state.”

“The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution entrusts states with the administration of elections, which serve as the hallmark and bedrock of our democracy,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read’s lawyers wrote.

“Michigan’s list-maintenance program makes more than a reasonable effort to remove ineligible voters,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s lawyers said in another filing.

“The U.S. Constitution puts states in charge of elections, not the federal government. That’s the law.” Cheri Hardmon

Spokesperson for the Michigan secretary of state