By Ryan Patrick Jones
Dec 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it had filed lawsuits against Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Nevada after the states failed to provide their voter registration lists to the department.
The department’s Civil Rights Division also filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, for records related to the 2020 election, it said in a statement.
The Justice Department cited laws it said allow the attorney general to demand statewide voter registration lists and to ensure states have proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs.
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
“If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration does not have a legal right to the requested information, which included unredacted voter data such as full names, birthdays, addresses, and state driver’s license numbers.
“We will not hand over Coloradans’ sensitive voting information to Donald Trump,” Griswold said in a statement.
Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said the Justice Department has provided “no meaningful justification” for the request. Galvin accused the administration of having “demonstrated a pattern of using citizens’ private information to go on outrageous fishing expeditions in an attempt to settle petty grievances.”
The Civil Rights Division has sent requests this year for voter registration-related information to at least 24 states, including requests for complete lists of registered voters from at least 22 states.
The Justice Department said it has now filed 18 lawsuits against states for failing to comply with such requests.
Reuters reported in September that the Justice Department is in talks with Homeland Security Investigations about transferring the sensitive voter roll data for use in criminal and immigration-related investigations.
Legal experts have raised privacy concerns about the federal government’s demands for voter information and its possible disclosure to HSI.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick JonesEditing by Rod Nickel)
