The Department of Justice is demanding that every state hand over unredacted voter rolls containing driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and party affiliation. They claim it’s to ensure states are following federal voter list maintenance laws.
But here’s the thing: the National Voter Registration Act requires states to make a “reasonable effort” to maintain accurate voter rolls. It does not require—or even authorize—states to hand over the private identifying information of millions of voters to the federal government. Multiple states have offered to share publicly available voter data. The DOJ refused. They want the private stuff, and no federal statute entitles them to it.
This should concern every American, regardless of party.
David Becker, a former senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section who served under both Clinton and George W. Bush, put it bluntly: the DOJ is demanding “date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license—the holy trinity of identity theft.”
The DOJ has sued 24 states that refused to comply. Most are states Trump lost in 2020. Courts in California and Oregon have already dismissed the lawsuits, with one judge calling the request “unprecedented and illegal.”
But the pressure campaign continues. And it’s getting uglier.
In late January, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota’s governor listing conditions for removing federal immigration agents from the state. Among them: hand over the voter rolls.
This feels like “coercive federalism,” one might call it. An administration that claims to champion states’ rights is bullying states into surrendering data that both federal and state laws protect. And the demand has nothing to do with immigration enforcement.
Keep in mind that this isn’t really a partisan issue (or, well, shouldn’t be). Republican secretaries of state in multiple states have resisted these demands. They understand, I presume, that the power you give your political allies today becomes the power your political opponents wield tomorrow.
Conservatives should consider this question: Would you want a Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom administration—or whatever Democrat comes next—to have a centralized national database linking your Social Security number, driver’s license, party affiliation, and voting history?
If the answer is no, it should remain no even when your team is in power. The precedent you set under a friendly administration is the precedent you live under when the other side takes power. This is Political Science 101, and yet we keep failing the exam.
Utah has not been sued—yet. The state is reportedly among those negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the DOJ. So far, Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson has provided only publicly available voter information and has declined to release the protected data.
That’s the right call. And Utah should hold the line.
To my knowledge, the federal government has not explained what it actually plans to do with this data or how it will be secured. States that sign this agreement surrender both data and control over their own elections to unelected federal bureaucrats.
This isn’t about whether you voted for or trust the current administration. It’s about whether you trust any administration with a centralized list of every voter’s most sensitive personal information.
The answer should be obvious. Governments that build such lists inevitably abuse them. History has taught us this lesson repeatedly. We just keep refusing to learn it.
Utah should stand firm. So should every other state. The feds have no business compiling a national database of voters’ private data, regardless of which party controls the White House.
