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The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against four more states as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to access sensitive voter data. The DOJ is also suing one Georgia county, seeking records from the 2020 election.
The department has now filed suit against 18 states — mostly Democratic-led, and all states that President Trump lost in the 2020 election — as part of its far-reaching litigation.
For months, the Justice Department has been demanding certain states turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists, including any driver’s license numbers and parts of voters’ Social Security numbers.
In court filings, the DOJ says it wants this personal information to check if states are following federal law on keeping accurate voter rolls.
But most states have refused, citing privacy restrictions.
The latest states to be sued are Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Nevada, the Justice Department announced Friday.
“At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement. “If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
In recent days, Dhillon has additionally touted the number of voter records run through a citizenship lookup tool housed within the Department of Homeland Security.
The Justice Department has also filed a lawsuit against Georgia’s Fulton County. The administration is trying to force local election officials to turn over all ballots and other records from the 2020 election that Trump lost.
Fulton County has been at the center of baseless claims by Trump and allies that the 2020 election was rigged against him.
The DOJ legal action against Fulton County follows the dismissal last month of the high-profile election interference case against Trump and his allies that was originally brought by county prosecutors.
Officials in Colorado are among those pushing back on the administration’s pursuit of voter data.
“We will not hand over Coloradans’ sensitive voting information to Donald Trump. He does not have a legal right to the information,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat who’s running for attorney general, said in a statement. “I will continue to protect our elections and democracy, and look forward to winning this case.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit against Colorado comes as Trump on Thursday announced on social media he was pardoning Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who’s serving a nine-year sentence after a conviction for granting unauthorized access to voting equipment, as part of an effort to investigate the 2020 election.
Trump’s pardon seems to be primarily symbolic, as Peters was convicted on state, not federal, charges. The power to issue a pardon for state crimes rests with Colorado’s governor.
The Department of Justice in recent days also announced a review of Colorado’s prisons.
With reporting by NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang and Benjamin Swasey.
