Washington
Related: About this forumMonths later, DOJ lawsuit to obtain WA voter rolls can move forward
It took the federal government months to properly serve attorneys for Washington in the Trump administrations litigation to force the state to turn over its voter rolls.
But now the lawsuit filed in December can finally move forward.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs told the Trump administration last year that he would be willing to provide public information from voter records. But he wouldnt hand over dates of birth, drivers license numbers or the last four digits of social security numbers. He wrote that information is protected under Washington law.
The DOJ has not specified what voters private data will be used for, how that data will be kept secure, and whether that data will be shared with other federal agencies, secretary of states office spokesperson Stefanie Randolph said in an email.
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2026/04/07/months-later-doj-lawsuit-to-obtain-wa-voter-rolls-can-move-forward/
Faux pas
(16,415 posts)LetMyPeopleVote
(180,354 posts)I am still pissed that Abbott gave trump all of Texas' voter data. trump needs these voter records to do his database of voters. trump has filed 30 of these lawsuits and have lost everyone so far. I am glad that the courts have repeatedly rejected these lawsuits
Link to tweet
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-doj-now-0-for-5-on-voter-roll-cases-as-court-rejects-massachusetts-lawsuit/
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, the DOJ demanded unfettered access to every states voter registration records as part of the administrations obsessive focus on immigration enforcement. While 17 Republican-led states have complied, the rest have refused, leading the DOJ to sue 29 states and Washington, D.C. for their voter rolls.
But when the DOJ demanded Massachusetts voter data, which includes sensitive information like social security numbers and dates of birth, it failed to explain why as required by the 1960 Civil Rights Act (CRA), District Court Judge Leo Sorokin noted in his opinion.*
The United States complaint fails for the simple reason that the Attorney Generals demand did not comply with Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the statute on which it purports to rely, Sorokin wrote. Here, the Attorney General offered no basisnoneand the demand was therefore facially inadequate.
Under the CRA, the DOJ can request copies of state voter records to ensure compliance with federal laws, provided that the agency also provides a basis and purpose for the demand. In state after state, the DOJ failed to explicitly do that, leading to their losses in California and Oregon. A Trump-appointed judge in Michigan also ruled against the DOJs demands on separate legal grounds. Sorokin cited all of those cases in his ruling.