By Luc Cohen
May 13 (Reuters) – The Department of Justice has issued a formal legal justification for the federal government’s demands that states share their unredacted voter rolls, even though half a dozen federal courts have already ruled that states have no obligation to provide those lists.
The May 12 opinion from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel – which provides advice to the White House and federal agencies – is not binding on states, dozens of which have resisted the Trump administration’s demands that they hand over lists including sensitive information such as voters’ partial social security numbers and driver’s license numbers.
But it signals that the Justice Department does not intend to back down from its push for the data, even after federal judges in California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Arizona have blocked it from forcing states to share their lists. The department says it needs the unredacted lists to oversee states’ processes for ensuring that ineligible people, including noncitizens, are not registered to vote.
The opinion comes as President Donald Trump’s Republicans are battling to maintain control of both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections. Trump and his allies have falsely asserted that his loss in the 2020 presidential election was due to fraud. Trump also frequently states that voting by illegal immigrants is rampant, even though state audits and independent studies have shown that the practice is rare.
LISTS COULD BE SHARED WITH DHS
In its opinion, the OLC said the Justice Department would be authorized to share the lists with the Department of Homeland Security, which enforces immigration laws, to check whether noncitizens were improperly registered to vote.
Voting rights advocates have raised concerns that the plans to run states’ voter rolls against DHS data could wrongly flag naturalized citizens as ineligible to vote.
The opinion also concluded that the voter rolls were subject to a civil rights law allowing the Justice Department to compel states to provide it with certain election-related documents, and that the department’s collection of such data would not run afoul of federal privacy laws.
DOJ SUES DOZENS OF STATES
The U.S. Constitution assigns individual states the role of administering federal elections, though the Justice Department has some oversight authority.
Since last year, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has sent letters to nearly every state demanding access to their unredacted rolls. Dozens of states, including several governed by Republicans, have resisted. The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking to force them to hand over their rolls.
The judges who have ruled against the Justice Department include three appointed by Democratic presidents and three appointed by Trump during his first term.
The Justice Department is appealing its losses in California, Oregon and Michigan.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New YorkEditing by Rod Nickel)
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