Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump listen in the Oval Office. (Alex Brandon/AP)
As the Trump administration vows to undertake a sweeping crackdown on liberal organizations[2] following last week’s murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, the Justice Department on Tuesday sued two blue states[3], Maine and Oregon, to attempt to gain access to their full, unredacted voter registration lists, intensifying President Trump’s anti-voting efforts[4].
The DOJ has demanded voter registration databases, which include sensitive personal information like driver’s license and Social Security numbers, from at least 27 states[5]. The department has never done this before. They have been rebuffed by red and blue states alike, who are reluctant to share this information with the Trump administration. But on Tuesday, the DOJ singled out Maine and Oregon with legal action[6], claiming the states both violated the National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
Both states vowed to fight back.
“It is absurd that the Department of Justice is targeting our state when Republican and Democratic secretaries all across the country are fighting back against this federal abuse of power just like we are,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said in response.
“If the President wants to use the DOJ to go after his political opponents and undermine our elections, I look forward to seeing them in court.”
“If the President wants to use the DOJ to go after his political opponents and undermine our elections, I look forward to seeing them in court,” added Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, who is also a Democrat.
President Donald Trump tried this tactic in his first term, when he formed an “election integrity” commission[7] after falsely claiming that he lost the popular vote in 2016 only because three million people voted illegally in California. The commission demanded sensitive voter data[8] from all 50 states, but the request was met with stiff resistance from both Republicans and Democrats; the Republican Secretary of State of Mississippi told the administration[9] to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”
But now Trump is using the Justice Department, whose Attorney General Pam Bondi has not been shy about retaliating against the president’s political opponents[10], to try again.
The administration is reportedly attempting to compile a national voter database[11], which could be weaponized to fuel the president’s false claims of widespread voter fraud. As the Brennan Center for Justice noted in a recent report[12]:
The DOJ’s demands for the voter files are one element of the attempted federal takeover of federal elections. If its requests succeed, the department could amass a federal database of personal information about every registered voter in the country. The Trump administration may use such a database to further promote false claims about election fraud, target political opponents, or attempt to force states to remove voters from the rolls based on incomplete information. This vast collection of personal information could also easily be disclosed or misused by unauthorized individuals and become a prime target for hackers.
In particular, the DOJ appears eager to share state voter data with the Department of Homeland Security[13], in order to comb through federal immigration databases to search for cases of ineligible voting or noncitizens on the voter rolls. Such databases are not designed for those purposes and will likely produce inaccurate results, especially because such fraud is also exceedingly rare[14]. Nonetheless, this will give them an opportunity to trumpet fake claims of fraud in order to advance Trump’s lies about the voting process.
“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files and we know there are x or y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers. This administration cannot be trusted. They have an enormous problem with credibility and an even bigger problem with data.”
The DOJ has already taken steps to retaliate against Trump’s enemies, as I reported in my recent cover story[15] for Mother Jones, including indicting Democratic officeholders and investigating Democratic-aligned organizations. There are widespread fears that such tactics will intensify following the administration’s pledge to target progressive groups[16] following Kirk’s assassination.
As I wrote, it’s not hard to imagine the administration “ramping up plans to expand investigations into groups they view as a threat, including pro-democracy organizations, voter registration efforts, and get-out-the-vote initiatives.”
Such actions are straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and Trump is using the DOJ as his willing foot soldiers.
References
- ^ Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. (www.motherjones.com)
- ^ liberal organizations (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ sued two blue states (www.democracydocket.com)
- ^ anti-voting efforts (www.motherjones.com)
- ^ 27 states (www.brennancenter.org)
- ^ legal action (www.justice.gov)
- ^ “election integrity” commission (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ sensitive voter data (www.motherjones.com)
- ^ told the administration (thehill.com)
- ^ political opponents (www.reuters.com)
- ^ national voter database (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ recent report (www.brennancenter.org)
- ^ Department of Homeland Security (www.reuters.com)
- ^ exceedingly rare (www.brennancenter.org)
- ^ cover story (www.motherjones.com)
- ^ target progressive groups (www.nytimes.com)