The U.S. Department of Justice is suing New Jersey, seeking to force the state to divulge a slew of private voter data, including addresses, driver’s licenses numbers, birth dates, and partial social security numbers.
The lawsuit is the latest escalation in federal attempts to exert pressure over state-run elections and comes months after federal officials first requested New Jersey voter data in July and were rebuffed.
“The Justice Department will continue to fulfill its oversight role dutifully, neutrally, and transparently wherever Americans vote in federal elections,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement.
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Dhillon is a former Trump legal advisor who sought to overturn the president’s loss in the 2020 presidential race and now leads the U.S. Division of Civil Rights.
This is the second lawsuit the Trump administration has filed against New Jersey this week. On Monday, it sued Gov. Mikie Sherrill over an executive order that bars federal agents from some state property.
Dozens of states led by officials from both major parties have rejected the department’s requests for private voter data. Those requests were first made last year and sought information on voter list maintenance under two federal laws in addition to voters’ private information.
New Jersey officials indicated they would reject the latest request as they did earlier ones.
“As several courts have already held, the Department of Justice’s request for voters’ personal information, including their drivers’ license numbers and social security numbers is baseless. We are committed to protecting the privacy of our state’s residents and we will defend against this lawsuit in court,” said New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport.
Earlier in February, a Trump-appointed judge in Michigan dismissed a similar lawsuit, finding the three federal statutes cited in the federal government’s lawsuit — those are the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 — do not allow it to obtain unredacted voter lists.
The Trump administration’s suit against New Jersey cites the same statutes. Judges have dismissed similar lawsuits in California and Oregon.
In all, the Trump administration has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia for voters’ data. On Thursday, it sued Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia in addition to New Jersey.
The federal government has rejected offers by some states to provide public voter registration lists, which shield birth dates, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers.
Civil rights groups viewed the suit as the latest in a series of attacks at free and fair elections from the Trump administration.
“Demanding sensitive voter information presents serious privacy threats for New Jersey’s voters and could be used to justify challenges and purges to disenfranchise voters. Elections, and thus voter information, are administered by states, and the Trump administration’s attempt to obtain New Jersey’s full, unredacted voter file is an unconstitutional and unlawful overreach and a brazen abuse of power,” said Amol Sinha, executive director the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.
Trump, whose 2020 loss led his supporters to ransack the U.S. Capitol, has repeatedly said he wants to “nationalize” elections whose administration the U.S. Constitution explicitly leaves to the states, raising fears he will attempt to interfere in midterm elections that are widely expected to cost Republicans their majority in the House of Representatives.
Elsewhere, he has stated a desire to end voting altogether.
“When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” he told Reuters in January.
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