Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Texas officials have turned over the state’s voter roll to the U.S. Justice Department, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, complying with the Trump administration’s demands for access to data on millions of voters across the country.
The Justice Department last fall began asking all 50 states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant identifying information on every registered voter in each state — and other election-related data. The Justice Department has said the effort is central to its mission of enforcing election law requiring states to regularly maintain voter lists by searching for and removing ineligible voters.
Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune that the state had sent its voter roll, which includes information on the approximately 18.4 million voters registered in Texas, to the Justice Department on Dec. 23.
The state included identifiable information about voters, including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, Pierce said.
Experts and state officials around the country have raised concerns over the legality of the Justice Department’s effort to obtain states’ voter rolls and whether it could compromise voter privacy protections. The Justice Department has said it is entitled to the data under federal law, and withholding it interferes with its ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws.
The department has now sued 23 states and Washington, D.C., for declining to voluntarily turn over their voter rolls. Those states, which include some led by officials of both political parties, have generally argued that states are responsible for voter registration and are barred by state and federal law from sharing certain private information about voters. In an interview with “The Charlie Kirk Show” last month, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said 13 states, including Texas, had voluntarily agreed to turn over their voter rolls.
In a letter to Nelson dated Friday and obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, the Democratic National Committee said the move to hand over the voter roll could violate federal election law.
DNC Chair Ken Martin said the turnover of such data is tantamount to a “big government power grab” and would invite privacy violations and could result in eligible voters being kicked off the rolls. The DNC, he said in a statement, “won’t stand idly by as the Trump DOJ tries to get access to Texas voters’ sensitive information.”
In its letter, Daniel Freeman, the DNC’s litigation director, requested records related to the Justice Department’s request, and warned the party could take further action.
Some election officials and voting rights watchdog groups have raised concerns about what the Justice Department intends to do with the information provided by the states, with some suggesting it may be used to create a national database of voters.
There may be litigation, for which the outcome is hard to predict. We’ll see what happens with the lawsuit filed against the states that have refused to comply. There’s no reason to believe anything but bad intent on the part of Pam Bondi and her minions, it’s just a question of how much they’ll try to do. One is always tempted to roll out the “if a Democratic President had tried this” trope, but it’s hard to do in this case because I can’t imagine a Democratic President or their Justice Department being anywhere near as malevolent and untrustworthy. For sure, though, if a Democratic President and their Justice Department had requested access to the state’s voter roll for some seemingly innocent or good-government reason, we all know that Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton and everyone else in their orbit would be screaming like banshees who just hit their thumbs with a hammer, and the rest of us would be scrambling around in response to that. This is yet another example of a related trope, the “It’s OK If You’re A Republican” trope, because, well, there’s no banshee screaming to be heard. Let’s all remember that for the next time.