Ten Democrat secretaries of state pushed back against President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday and asked the administration to provide additional information regarding its request for statewide voter registration lists.
The ten Democrat secretaries of state sent a letter on Tuesday to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem detailing their “immense concern” with recent reports that claimed the U.S. Justice Department has shared voter data with the Department of Homeland Security.
In Tuesday’s letter, the Democrat officials claimed that each of them had received a letter from the Justice Department requesting the “full, unredacted statewide voter registration list.” The officials claimed that, “in some instances,” the Justice Department’s requests included the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, voters’ license numbers, and voters’ dates of birth.
“Given the unprecedented nature and scope of the DOJ’s requests, we require additional information about how this information will be used, shared, and secured,” the Democrat officials stated.
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The 10 Democrat secretaries of state also accused senior Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security officials of sharing “misleading and at times contradictory information” during two recent meetings that were arranged by the National Association of Secretaries of State.
According to the Democrat officials, a Justice Department official told the secretaries of state in August that the Justice Department “intended to use voter information to assess compliance with the voter list maintenance provisions of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).” However, the Department of Homeland Security later announced that the agency had “received this data and would input it into the unproven and potentially insecure citizenship-check system, SAVE.”
The secretaries of state from Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington requested that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security respond by December 1 and explain whether voter data has been shared with other federal agencies, to clarify what voter file fields were shared, to detail what government agencies would receive and maintain the voter data, and to explain how government agencies will use the voter data.
