Trump’s govt order instructs the Justice Division to aim to ascertain such information-sharing agreements with states, and orders it to “prioritize enforcement of Federal election integrity laws” in any state that declines to take action, in addition to think about withholding federal grants to such states.
The Justice Division declined to remark for this story.
Michigan’s Division of State mentioned it’s reviewing the request. Officers in Pennsylvania mentioned that they met with Justice Division officers and that “the discussion was consistent with our longstanding cooperation with our federal partners to protect the integrity of elections.”
JP Martin, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Workplace, mentioned the workplace is “dealing with DOJ in a good faith manner while ensuring we are following the letter of federal and state laws.”
States obtain requests for voter rolls
In the meantime, a number of states are receiving Justice Division requests for his or her voter rolls, and details about voter roll cleansing. They embody Wisconsin, the place the division requested in June for a replica of its voter rolls, together with responses to a number of questions on voter registration actions, in response to complaints the division mentioned it had acquired about doable violations of federal voting legislation. Eight different states acquired related requests, the Washington Submit reported.
Wisconsin election officers directed the division to a web-based portal the place the general public model of the voter rolls might be bought for $12,500.
Trump’s govt order additionally directs the Homeland Safety Division to evaluation “publicly available” variations of the voter lists “alongside Federal immigration databases … for consistency with Federal requirements.”
Associated | Election officers face restricted choices as federal safety assets fall away
The DOJ requests are presumably an try to “gather all the relevant data in one place, conduct an authoritative study, and put these issues to rest,” Langhofer mentioned, referring to questions Republicans have repeatedly raised about whether or not ineligible voters are casting ballots.
“It is important to know that our voters are citizens and residents, and are not voting in more than one jurisdiction,” he mentioned in a textual content message. “If there is a problem in one of those areas, we should fix it — and if there is *not* a problem there, people should know that our system works well.”
However election officers look like involved, mentioned David Becker, an election lawyer who beforehand labored within the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division and now leads the nonprofit Heart for Election Innovation & Analysis.
The current communications from the division are “odd at the least, and it is an intentional rebalancing of the federal-state dynamic at worst,” Becker mentioned.
Earlier this week, in response to calls from election officers concerning the Justice Division’s requests, Becker hosted a convention name that was attended by greater than 350 state and native election officers from 33 states, which he mentioned is a mirrored image of the anxiousness about doable federal overreach.
Becker famous that the letters adopted a sequence of aggressive administration actions on elections since Trump returned to workplace, together with a lawsuit in opposition to Orange County, California, over entry to voter information, and a presidential directive demanding an investigation into Chris Krebs, the nation’s former high cybersecurity official. Krebs angered Trump in 2020 by contradicting his assertion that his election loss to Joe Biden was on account of fraud.
“All of these seem designed not to create a viable election policy, but to lay the groundwork to claim the 2026 and 2028 elections are stolen, just as the president did with the 2020 and 2022 elections,” Becker mentioned. “And the troubling part is, it seems now the White House is prepared to use the full weight of the government to spread those claims.”
Votebeat reporters Hayley Harding and Alexander Shur contributed to this report.
