DOJ sues 5 more states for access to voter rolls

Source: Politico
Type: news-reporting
Author: Jacob Wendler

Source Text

The Department of Justice filed suit Thursday against five additional states, demanding they share election data with the Trump administration amid its nationwide push for access to state voter rolls.

With the latest wave of legal action, the DOJ has now sued more than two dozen states as a part of its push for access to voter files. Most of those states are controlled by Democrats, although the latest spate of suits includes four states — Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky and West Virginia — who supported President Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024 The fifth state sued Thursday was New Jersey.

The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to take power over election administration in recent months, despite the fact that the Constitution delegates that authority to the states.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to “nationalize” elections in recent weeks, alarming election officials across the political spectrum.

While access to election information varies by jurisdiction, states generally release redacted versions of their voter rolls to the public and government agencies. But the DOJ has demanded that states supply the federal government with unredacted files, including voters’ private data, like their driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon accused state election officials of “choosing to fight us in court rather than show their work” with regard to voter roll access.

“We will not be deterred, regardless of party affiliation, from carrying out critical election integrity legal duties,” she said in a Thursday statement.

The DOJ has argued the states are in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which allows the attorney general to request voter records from election officials. State officials have pushed back on that reasoning, framing the requests as an escalation of the administration’s broader effort to insert itself into state election proceedings.

Mike Queen, a spokesperson for West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner’s office, said the office had not been served with a lawsuit as of Wednesday afternoon.

“Regardless, I think Secretary Warner’s comments to the DOJ were pretty clear. Bring it on! The federal government is not going to get any personal information on West Virginia voters as long as Kris Warner is Secretary of State,” Queen said in a statement.

“Neither state nor federal law entitles the Department of Justice to collect private information on law-abiding American citizens. Utahns can be assured that my office will always follow the Constitution and the law, protect voters’ rights, and administer free and fair elections,” Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson said in a statement.

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, likewise, pushed back on the lawsuit, touting the state’s elections as “a national success story” in a statement.

“Kentucky law protects voters’ personal information, and I will not voluntarily commit a data breach by providing Kentuckians’ personal data to the federal bureaucracy unless a court order tells me to,” he said.

Spokespersons for Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuits.

The Justice Department also raided an Atlanta-area elections facility last month after suing to obtain voting materials from the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, Georgia, a longtime centerpiece of debunked hard-right conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

Democratic attorneys general are strategizing on how to counter the possibility of federal interference in the midterm elections. One scenario that has them concerned is the potential for the Trump administration to heed the calls of MAGA activists and deploy ICE agents to voting locations, but a Department of Homeland Security official told election officials Wednesday that would not be the case.

Trump repeated unproven claims that “cheating is rampant in our elections” during his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a GOP bill that would require voters to show proof of citizenship to register.

Events Citing This Source

Event	Date	Category
Trump FBI Raids Polling Places	Jan 28, 2026	Election Tampering

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