The Justice Department is seeking voter registration list data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia as part of what they consider to be their responsibility to “ensure that states have proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs.”
While many states have complied with the requests, the department has filed lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C., for refusing.
The Justice Department has said it must comply with the president’s March 2025 executive order, which requires the attorney general to “ensure compliance” with voter registration laws, and to “take appropriate action with respect to states that fail to comply” with voter laws.
The requests were unusual. The Justice Department has asked for information from states on elections before, but not voter registration databases from so many states.
States run their own elections and maintain their own voter data. There is no national database of voters, and the federal government does not oversee U.S. elections.
But President Donald Trump, who still falsely maintains the 2020 election was stolen and that there is widespread voter fraud though members of his own administration have said there was no evidence to back up those claims, has suggested that Republicans should nationalize elections. That move would violate the U.S. Constitution.
The Justice Department is asking states to agree to what they call a “confidential memorandum of understanding,” which would require states to include voter names, dates of birth, residential addresses, state driver’s licenses and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
The DOJ says that after the states hand over the data, they’ll alert the officials to any “voter list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns, the Justice Department found when testing, assessing and analyzing” the state’s voter registration lists.
Notably, six Republican-leaning states have refused to turn over their data: Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia. And not every state that has handed over their data has agreed to sign the agreements; Iowa, Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee did not.
Across the country, seven federal judges in seven states have dismissed the DOJ’s litigation, with one judge in Rhode Island calling it a “fishing expedition.” The DOJ has appealed three of those rulings. The rest of the lawsuits are ongoing in courtrooms from coast to coast.
Here’s where the lawsuits stand:
Ongoing litigation:
The Justice Department has ongoing litigation in two dozen states: Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, D.C., Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Hawaii, Idaho, West Virginia, Utah, Kentucky and New Jersey.
They’ve sued secretaries of state, elections commissions and boards of elections around the country in their efforts to get this information that they say will be used to look into any potential “voter list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies or concerns.”
Dismissed:
The litigation was dismissed in California, Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona and Oregon.
Ongoing appeals:
California, Oregon, Michigan.
Outliers:
The Justice Department reached a settlement with Oklahoma, with the state agreeing to provide voter data in exchange for the DOJ dismissing the lawsuit. The Justice Department and the North Carolina State Board of Elections reached a legal settlement on the issue. North Dakota has been discussing a potential information-sharing agreement with the DOJ, and no lawsuit has been filed.
In Iowa, the Justice Department asked the state to sign a memorandum giving it underacted access to statewide lists. The state has refused.
In Alabama, a request for data was made but state officials didn’t respond to questions about where that request stands. In North Dakota, the Justice Department was in discussions with the state over supplying the data as of last summer, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks the cases.
States that willingly provided voter data:
Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Kansas and Montana.
