Democratic state election officials say the Justice Department’s letter to Minnesota over its voter rolls represents a significant escalation, with several warning that the Trump administration could use immigration enforcement to exert influence over November’s midterm elections.
The officials are baffled by the Trump administration’s continued demand for access to state voter information and refuse to comply, telling POLITICO they view the requests as part of a broader effort by the administration to insert itself into state election proceedings.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, has been at the center of the push after Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a letter to Gov. Tim Walz that one condition of restoring “law and order” in the state amid the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown would be for Minnesota to turn over its voter rolls to the federal government.
Minnesota — one of two dozen states, along with the District of Columbia, sued by the administration — has rejected the request, prompting an unprecedented legal clash between the Justice Department and state election officials.
“To me, [it] seems to be a project in service of the president’s longstanding but false view that election systems around the country are rigging elections,” Simon told POLITICO. “And this project seems to be in service of that, and that’s the best I can tell.”
Simon said he has not heard back from the Trump administration since responding to the Bondi letter. “This was already a dispute, but it was a dispute being fought where it belongs, which is in a court of law,” he said.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat running for reelection this year, called the letter to officials in Minnesota “extortion” and echoed the suggestion that the effort was aimed at something beyond voter rolls.
“The voter roll stuff is not about voter rolls. There’s something bigger going on,” Fontes said in an interview this week, as dozens of secretaries of state gathered in Washington for a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State. “They’re bits and pieces, interchangeable in this jigsaw puzzle, and we’re being told something that’s not true,” he added.
The highly unusual push for access to states’ voter rolls is part of a yearlong campaign by the Trump administration, which says it is seeking to ensure that states’ voter registration practices comply with federal law and safeguard election integrity. The White House has requested voter records from nearly every state and Washington, D.C. The move comes as Trump frequently repeats his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”
The White House said it was authorized to make the requests under longstanding laws such as the Civil Rights Act.
“The Civil Rights Act, National Voting Rights Act, and Help America Vote Act all give the Department of Justice full authority to ensure states comply with federal election laws, which mandate accurate state voter rolls. 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 rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
At least 11 states have complied with the administration’s request, according to the Brennan Center.
Wyoming is one of the states that complied, and its secretary of state, Chuck Gray, a Republican, told reporters on Friday that it has been “very disturbing” to watch Democrats rebuff the administration’s request to engage in what he described as regular upkeep of voter rolls.
“We’ve been engaging in routine voter list maintenance that people support in making sure the voter lists are clean,” he said.
The Justice Department has sued the 24 states — most, but not all, of which are helmed by Democrats — that have refused to comply, with most citing concerns over exposing sensitive voter information.
“I’m certainly concerned that people may fear that the Department of Justice having access to the voting rolls might make them a target in some way,” said Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
“This Justice Department has weaponized its office to target people based on identity and based on political affiliation,” she said.
Uzoma Nkwonta, a partner at Elias Law Group, which is representing voters and civic organizations in several states who are also trying to prevent the release of voter rolls, called the effort “another example of overreach by the Department of Justice and the federal government.” “The fact that DOJ officials have stated publicly that they expect to see hundreds of thousands individuals removed from the rolls once they have this data … should set off a red flag,” Nkwonta said, noting that maintaining voter registration lists is a responsibility for the states, not the federal government.
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