Attorney General Pam Bondi’s request that Minnesota turn over sensitive voter registration records to the federal government amid tensions over ICE and immigration enforcement underscores the importance of the administration’s nationwide data collection that is facing resistance in several states and obstruction in the courts.
The Justice Department has already subpoenaed Minnesota and 23 other states for voter data, but Bondi on Saturday urged Gov. Tim Walz to help “bring an end to the chaos” by turning over the records, among other demands.
The administration said it wants the full registration records so they can “help” states “clean up” their rolls of ineligible voters. Voter advocates, former DOJ attorneys and at least one federal judge are skeptical that is the administration’s sole purpose in collecting the data.
As the courts review the DOJ’s reasoning for needing the data, a separate judge — who is handling a challenge to the administration’s immigration tactics — expressed concern about how Bondi raised the claim amid the unrest.
“Is the executive trying to achieve a goal through force that he cannot achieve through the courts?” District Judge Kate Menendez asked the Justice Department directly during a hearing on Monday.
A DOJ lawyer responded that the administration was simply “trying to enforce federal law.”
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, like many other state officials, has refused to provide the data because he says doing so would violate state and federal privacy laws.
Simon told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday that it was “very troubling” to receive Bondi’s letter.
“Literally hours after the second, let’s not forget the second, killing of an American citizen in the city of Minneapolis by ICE agents… there is this term sheet,” he said, “this ransom note.”
Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona, compared Bondi’s letter to “organized crime”.
“They walk into your neighborhood. They start beating everyone, and then they beat what they want. That’s not how America is supposed to work,” Fontes said in a post on social media.
Bondi’s letter did not explicitly promise a change in President Donald Trump’s approach on immigration in exchange for voter records, instead pointing to the need to “bring back law and order” to Minneapolis.
Asked for comment, the Justice Department pointed to comments by Bondi on Saturday that blamed Minnesota officials for inviting the “worst of the worst” to Minneapolis through “sanctuary city” policies.
In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson argued that the Justice Department has “full authority” to ensure that states comply with federal election laws.
“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter registries free of errors and illegally registered non-citizen voters,” she said.
Disruption in court
The department, in its unprecedented data collection campaign, has asked states to produce their full voter rolls, which can include non-public information such as voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers, full dates of birth and current addresses.
But even the Justice Department’s stated plan to conduct its own review of the rolls is raising legal questions amid concerns that eligible voters could be disenfranchised.
The department says it is entitled to registration records under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 but no court has yet agreed with that argument, and two courts have rejected it outright.
A federal judge in California tossed out the department’s voter registration lawsuit against that state earlier this month, in a strong opinion that warned against “unbridled consolidation of all electoral power in the Executive without action by Congress and public debate.” A judge in Oregon also decided to dismiss the case, finding the DOJ’s legal arguments lacking, he confirmed at a hearing on Monday.
Amid those court defeats, Bondi pressing the dispute in her letter to Walz “seems to be desperation,” said David Becker, a former DOJ attorney who now runs the Center for Election Research and Innovation.
Apparent GOP resistance
In most cases, the DOJ has targeted Democratic state officials, but that doesn’t mean Republican-led states have been eager to hand over their voter rolls.
The Trump administration first sent letters to state officials requesting the sensitive voter information in the summer, but so far, only 14 states have either fully complied or are working to comply with the requests, according to comments a department attorney made in court.
States that go along with the department’s demands are opening themselves up to lawsuits as well. Voter advocates have asked Nebraska to prevent the state from handing over voters’ personal information to the DOJ. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, has warned 10 states of potential legal problems in a plan – which emerged in proposed agreements the department has offered to states – to subject their voter rolls to additional scrutiny by the federal government.
The proposals say the Department would notify states of “issues” it found in their registration records, and states would then have 45 days to “clean up” the rolls of ineligible voters. Such a process could run afoul of a federal law that puts guardrails on how and when states can remove voters, the DNC said, pointing to the steps the law requires before purging voters who are believed to have walked away.
Election officials in at least two of the states targeted by Democrats have since said that, while they are sharing the data with the Trump administration, they have declined to agree to the terms of the proposal.
Revamped data tool draws scrutiny, concerns
The administration’s stated desire to take a more direct role in maintaining the list comes as a tool that Trump has encouraged states to use on a voluntary basis to clean up their rolls appears to be creating its own problems.
Last year, a division of the Department of Homeland Security dramatically changed a tool called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement or SAVE, which has been used for years to verify the immigration and citizenship status of people seeking government benefits.
The expanded tool now includes access to Social Security and US passport data, and the Trump administration has encouraged states to upload their voter files to the enhanced SAVE system to hunt for potential non-citizens on their voter rolls.
But questions persist about the accuracy of the results and the potential impact on eligible voters if state and local officials don’t fully verify the matches the system generates.
In deep red Texas, for example, state election officials last year identified 2,724 potential noncitizens on the rolls after running its entire list of more than 18 million voters through the SAVE system. The state in turn asked local election officials to verify the citizenship status of flag voters in their counties.
But in Travis County, Austin’s home, a more thorough search of the state’s own data showed that 11 of 97 county voters initially flagged by the Secretary of State’s office as potential noncitizens already provided proof of citizenship when they registered to vote through the state’s driver’s license division, according to Celia Israel, who oversees voter registration programs.
CNN’s Marshall Cohen and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
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