Letter comes the same week as hearing scheduled in related lawsuit
Article Summary
- The Trump administration sent the Illinois State Board of Elections a letter this week requesting troves of voter data.
- The request included sensitive information about voters and the state’s efforts to scrub the rolls of ineligible voters.
- The request came two days ahead of a scheduled court hearing in a related case.
- One former DOJ attorney who is now an elections expert said the letter is similar to requests filed in multiple other states and that it goes far beyond the Justice Department’s legal authority.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD (Capitol News Illinois) – The Trump administration has asked Illinois election officials for a copy of the state’s voter registration database, including sensitive data about individual voters and detailed information about the state’s efforts to scrub ineligible voters from the rolls.
In a letter dated Monday, July 28, lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division also asked for a list of all the election officials in Illinois who were responsible for carrying out federally mandated efforts to keep state’s voter rolls accurate and up to date during a two-year period leading up to the November 2024 elections.
State officials did not immediately comment on the request Tuesday. But David Becker, a former attorney in the DOJ’s voting section who now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the letter is similar to requests filed in multiple other states and that it goes far beyond the Justice Department’s legal authority.
“The Department of Justice asked for the complete voter file for the state of Illinois, including all fields in that file, which is an absolutely huge file that contains so much sensitive data about Illinois citizens, including driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers and dates of birth that the Department of Justice is not entitled to receive and not entitled to demand,” he said in an interview. “They know this. Other states have told them this, and yet they continue to seek to receive this information, citing sections of federal law that don’t apply and don’t require that.”
The voter list maintenance activities are at the heart of a federal lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections that was filed last year by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department filed what’s known as a “statement of interest” in that case, indicating the agency has an interest in the outcome of the case, but stopping short of formally seeking to intervene as a party.
Read more: Feds weigh in on lawsuit challenging how Illinois maintains voter registration rolls
A hearing in that case is scheduled for Wednesday morning in Chicago where U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis could render a decision.
National Voter Registration Act
A snippet of the U.S. Department of Justice’s letter to the Illinois State Board of Elections. (Capitol News Illinois illustration with highlight added)
Under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, states are required to make available for public inspection records about their efforts to ensure their voter registration lists are accurate and up to date.
They are also required to file biennial reports with the federal Election Assistance Commission about the steps they have taken to keep their lists updated, such as mailing out confirmation notices to voters and removing the names of voters who have died or moved.
In response to the Judicial Watch lawsuit, Illinois has asserted that it is a “bottom up” state when it comes to administering elections, meaning the registration lists are compiled and maintained by local election authorities.
According to the DOJ letter and the Judicial Watch lawsuit, the report Illinois filed for the two-year period leading up to the 2024 election suggested several counties were doing a poor job of maintaining their local voter rolls.
The DOJ letter asks not only for detailed explanations of those issues but also for a complete list of election officials who are responsible for carrying out the list maintenance responsibilities between November 2022 and November 2024.
For example, the DOJ letter states that 32 of the state’s 102 counties reported they did not send out any confirmation notices during that period, while 16 other counties reported the number of notices they sent was more than 100% of all registered voters in the county.
The letter also asks for the number of voters identified as ineligible to vote since November 2022 either because they were noncitizens, adjudicated as incompetent, or for felony convictions.
“First, I should say there is no federal law whatsoever that requires states to go through their lists and try to find noncitizens,” Becker said. “But second, I’d note that there’s no evidence that there are any significant numbers of noncitizens on Illinois’ or any other state’s voter lists. So once again, it appears the DOJ is seeking to invent authority that Congress has simply not granted.”
Officials at the State Board of Elections said the agency’s legal division was reviewing the DOJ request but offered no further comment. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
By Peter Hancock
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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