Personal voter data is entrusted to states—not Trump’s DOJ
Personal voter data is entrusted to states—not Trump’s DOJ
- Thu, May 7 2026 at 2:12 PM
Mark,
CREW filed an amicus brief on behalf of a group of former secretaries of state, urging the Courts of Appeals to let Michigan and California continue managing their own voter rolls—upholding the lower courts' decisions to throw out the DOJ's lawsuits.
DONATE→ For the first time in American history, the DOJ has demanded confidential voter information from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and is compiling that information into a single record system.
Multiple states have refused to turn over their voter rolls, standing up to protect voters’ privacy. And when their refusal was taken to court in Michigan and California, the district courts agreed with them and dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit.
Rather than accept the losses in Michigan and California, the DOJ filed emergency appeals, making those the first appeals in the six cases the DOJ has lost in its attempt to gain access to state voter rolls.
Mark, the Constitution gives states, not the federal government, the responsibility of regulating and administering elections.
As the Elections Clause provides, state officials’ proximity to local needs makes them well-positioned to regulate and administer elections. State election administrators’ expertise about local election procedures surpasses that of the president.
The Constitution simply does not authorize the president to intervene in a state’s regulation of elections without clear authorization from Congress.
In addition to this constitutional mandate, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act unambiguously confirm that states have authority over voter roll maintenance, not federal agencies.
Therefore, the DOJ cannot conduct voter roll list maintenance on behalf of the states.
Michigan and California voters have entrusted their personal information—such as their driver’s license number, Social Security number, address, phone number—to their state, not to the federal government.As our brief explains, the DOJ’s demands for this information violate the Privacy Act, which restricts a state’s ability to share sensitive information with federal agencies.
Passed by Congress after the Watergate and COINTELPRO scandals, the Privacy Act sought to prevent the federal government from creating national data banks that would consolidate and store the personal data of Americans at separate agencies.
The appeals courts must affirm the district courts’ dismissal of the DOJ’s lawsuits against Michigan and California and allow the states to retain their voter rolls in accordance with the Constitution and federal law.
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