The Donald Trump administration’s aggressive push to obtain sensitive voter registration data has encountered unexpected resistance from Republican-led states, revealing fissures within GOP ranks over federalism and election security.
While the Justice Department has sued 25 mostly Democratic states for voter roll information, at least six Republican-led states have quietly refused to comply with demands for confidential data including Social Security numbers, driver’s license IDs, and current residences, reported CNN.
“They’re not going to get our personal information,” said West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, a Republican.
GOP election officials cite state privacy laws and constitutional concerns about federal overreach, and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, rejected the DOJ’s proposed agreement requiring states to remove voters deemed ineligible within 45 days.
“We were adamant on the idea that maintaining voter rolls should be done on the state level,” Watson told CNN.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has dismissed these concerns as “silly,” arguing that Social Security numbers are routinely shared, yet election officials worry the true intent extends beyond voter roll maintenance.
A Republican official, speaking anonymously to avoid White House retaliation, suggested the data could be weaponized for immigration enforcement or used as “a cudgel” to delegitimize midterm results if Republicans lose.
The DOJ’s aggressive tactics — including giving states just seven days to respond and aggressive follow-up calls — have alarmed even Trump allies. Only Alaska and Texas have signed the proposed memorandum, while roughly a dozen states provided data without accepting the agreement.
Complicating matters, the SAVE system the DOJ wants to use for cross-referencing contains rife with false positives, wrongly flagging naturalized citizens as ineligible voters due to outdated federal data.
The Kentucky State Board of Elections asked the DOJ in August to explain why it needed the data, and a Republican election official in another state agreed the request wasn’t clear.
“They don’t need the driver’s license, Social Security number and date of birth to make sure that we’re making a reasonable effort at maintaining our voter rolls,” that GOP election official said.
That official, who requested anonymity to avoid blowback from the White House, suggested the data could be used for immigration enforcement or as a “cudgel” to cast doubt on potential GOP midterm losses.
“If states don’t give this information and then Republicans lose and they can go back and say, ‘See, it’s because they didn’t give us this information, so they cheated and all these illegal people that shouldn’t have been voting voted,’” the official said.
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