The Department of Justice is taking two states to court in an escalating battle over voter data, and it sounds like things are getting heated. The Trump administration’s DOJ has announced lawsuits against both Oregon and Maine, with the goal of forcing them to hand over their voter registration lists. These lists aren’t just names and addresses, either—the department wants access to sensitive personal information like partial Social Security numbers.
While the DOJ has been asking numerous states for this data, Oregon and Maine are the first to be hit with a lawsuit for refusing to comply. The DOJ’s official stance is that it needs the raw data to determine whether the states are following federal law for maintaining accurate voter rolls. According to Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, “States simply cannot pick and choose which federal laws they will comply with”.
