In a press briefing Tuesday with the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, Aguilar and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson claimed the Justice Department’s requests for voter information include sensitive personal information data that the department has no authority to access.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter in June to Aguilar requesting Nevada provide voter roll data and other election-related information, such as Nevada’s current voter registration list. It sent similar letters to about two dozen states.
The request came after a March executive order from President Donald Trump seeking to change how elections are administered across the country, including requiring people provide documents proving they are citizens when registering to vote.
Most states — including Nevada — have responded by giving over public information while withholding private information, the secretaries of state said Tuesday.
Secretaries of state Aguilar and Benson said the federal government’s request includes voters’ private information, including their Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.
The secretaries argue the demands from the Department of Justice go beyond normal oversight and appear to be using its authority to intimidate states into allowing the federal government to exceed their authority and give over protected data that could be misused or abused, Benson said.
Two states, Maine and Oregon, have been sued for failing to cooperate so far. In the lawsuits, the department argues it needs full voter lists to enforce requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to Dax Goldstein, director of Election Protection for States United.
Aguilar said secretaries of state need more transparency from the federal government about what they plan to do with the data and how they are going to secure it before states hand it over.
“This is voter information. These are people’s lives that live in our communities,” he said. “Secretaries of states on both sides of the aisle are standing together on this.”
Aguilar pointed to Nevada’s recent cyberattack and highlighted the importance of protecting sensitive data.
“We know that people are using this information to harm our citizens and to harm our voters,” he said. “We cannot just give it over for any reason whatsoever. It has to be justified.”
Benson said the federal government has the right to access some of the data but not all of it and federal and state privacy laws prevent the secretaries from providing access to the private data.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said in a Monday statement that enforcing the country’s election laws is a priority in the administration and the civil rights division and that the DOJ has the authority to ensure states have proper voter registration procedures and programs to maintain clean voter rolls that contain only eligible voters in federal elections.
“The recent request by the Civil Rights Division for state voter rolls is pursuant to that statutory authority, and the responsive data is being screened for ineligible voter entries,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Secretaries of state don’t know what the data will be used for, but Benson expressed concern it will be used to target, harass and intimidate individual citizens and political adversaries and could deter communities from voting.
Goldstein argues the Department of Justice doesn’t meaningfully address privacy concerns states have raised and don’t point to a substantive reason in the states’ list maintenance procedures to think there’s a problem. Goldstein claimed the department is seeking the information to share voter lists with the Department of Homeland Security for criminal and immigration enforcement.
“Historically, requests from DOJ in service of (Help America Vote Act) and (National Voter Registration Act) enforcement is much more targeted,” Goldstein said. “In contrast, these requests have been set up as a fishing expedition, sucking in the private, personal information of voters in the United States.”
Goldstein added it is concerning that election conspiracy theories are shaping Department of Justice actions “under the guise of legitimate federal government oversight.”
“Non-citizen voting is a conspiracy theory and is exceedingly rare,” Goldstein said.
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