Tracking the DOJ’s effort to get U.S. voter registration data
The Justice Department is asking states to agree to what it calls a “confidential memorandum of understanding,” which would require states to include voters’ names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s licenses and the last four digits of their Social Security number.
The DOJ says once states turn over the data, it will alert officials of any “voter roll maintenance issues, inadequacies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns found by the Department of Justice during testing, evaluation, and analysis” of the state’s voter registration lists.
Notably, six Republican-leaning states refused to release their data: Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia. And not all the states that submitted their data agreed to sign the agreements; Iowa, Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee did not.
Nationwide, seven federal judges in seven states rejected the DOJ’s appeal, with one judge in Rhode Island calling it a “fishing expedition.” The DOJ appealed three of these decisions. The other lawsuits are underway in courtrooms from coast to coast.
Here’s where the lawsuits stand:
Current litigation:
The Justice Department has ongoing litigation in two dozen states: Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, DC, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Hawaii, Idaho, West Virginia, Utah, Kentucky and New Jersey.
They have sued secretaries of state, election commissions and boards of elections across the country in their efforts to obtain this information, which they say will be used to examine possible “problems, inadequacies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies or concerns related to the maintenance of voter rolls.”
Rejected:
The litigation was dismissed in California, Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona and Oregon.
Calls in progress:
California, Oregon, Michigan.
Outliers:
The Justice Department reached a settlement with Oklahoma, with the state agreeing to provide voter data in exchange for the Justice Department’s dismissal of the lawsuit. The Department of Justice and the North Carolina State Board of Elections have reached a legal settlement on the issue. North Dakota has discussed a possible information-sharing agreement with the DOJ, and no lawsuit has been filed.
In Iowa, the Justice Department asked the state to sign a memorandum giving it limited access to statewide lists. The state refused.
In Alabama, a request for data was made, but state officials did not respond to questions about the status of that request. In North Dakota, the Justice Department had been in talks with the state about providing the data since last summer, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks the cases.
States that voluntarily provided voter data:
Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Kansas and Montana.
