OAN Staff Blake Wolf
11:15 AM – Friday, September 26, 2025
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed suit against six U.S. states for refusing to hand over statewide voter registration lists requested by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The lawsuits target California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
The DOJ filed cases in federal courts across the states, seeking to compel election officials to release complete voter registration records — including names, driver’s license numbers, birth dates, and partial Social Security numbers.
The Justice Department explained that failing to provide the U.S. attorney general with the voter rolls prevents Bondi from ensuring that U.S. states are adequately following list maintenance requirements under federal law.
“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” Bondi stated. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”
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Bondi had requested the information earlier this year.
Minnesota’s Secretary of State, Steve Simon, said on Thursday: “We have been very clear with the DOJ about our position that state and federal law do not allow our office to provide them with private voter data unless they provide information about how the information will be used and secured.”
California’s Secretary of State, Shirley Webber, also claimed that the DOJ “failed to provide sufficient legal authority to justify their intrusive demands.”
The lawsuits appear to stem from suspicions that state voter rolls include deceased individuals — whose identities could be misused by relatives or others to cast ballots — as well as noncitizens, raising concerns about election integrity.
“States are required to safeguard American elections by complying with our federal elections laws,” stated Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Clean voter rolls protect American citizens from voting fraud and abuse, and restore their confidence that their states’ elections are conducted properly, with integrity, and in compliance with the law.”
After returning to the White House in January, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency created by Congress in 2002, to amend the national voter registration form to require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. However, that mandate is currently being blocked in federal court.
Bondi’s Department of Justice also previously sued Oregon and Maine for failing to provide the requested information regarding voter list maintenance procedures and copies of the states’ voter registration rolls.
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