Why Are 24 States and D.C. Refusing To Produce Voter Rolls?
They say they are withholding their voter rolls from the U.S. Dept. of Justice to protect voter privacy, but are they also protecting voter fraud and illegal immigrants?
A national 2024 poll found that 58% of American adults — almost six in 10 — worried the 2024 election would be tainted by voter fraud.
Of those voters, nearly 90% of likely Trump voters expressed concern about voter fraud. Donald Trump received about seventy-seven million votes.
Without getting into arguments about the extent of voter fraud, it is clear that voter fraud is a concern for a significant portion of American voters. What is a sensible response to a concern of this magnitude?
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed lawsuits against 24 states and the District of Columbia that have refused to release their full, unredacted voter rolls. Attorney General Pamela Bondi says the DOJ wants to protect the integrity of American elections.
“Accurate voter rolls are the foundation of election integrity, and any state that fails to meet this basic obligation of transparency can expect to see us in court,” said Bondi.
State voter rolls are generally public, and routinely distributed to political parties seeking to get out the vote. There is no inherent right to privacy for voter registration — only with respect to how the registrant voted.
The point in dispute is that the DOJ is seeking full and unredacted voter rolls that include partial social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, etc. The Department of Homeland Security has stated that it would receive the data from the DOJ to “scrub aliens from voter rolls.”
Setback
Last week, two federal judges in California and Oregon, both nominated by Democratic presidents, issued decisions that constitute a major setback for the DOJ.
