Texas Hands Over List of Registered Voters to Trump Administration

By Natalia Contreras and Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune 

AUSTIN, TX — 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.

Democrats 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 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.

The Democratic National Committee stated 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.

In a proposed memorandum of understanding sent to Wisconsin officials last month and publicly released by state officials, the Justice Department said that upon receiving the state’s voter data, it would check the state’s voter roll for “list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, anomalies or concerns.” The department would then notify the state and give it 45 days to correct any problems. The state would then agree to resubmit the voter roll to the department. Wisconsin declined the agreement, and the Justice Department has since sued the state.

Texas agreed to the memorandum of understanding and released the data, but told the department that it did so with the understanding it wouldn’t “limit or affect the duties, responsibilities, and rights” of the state under either the NVRA or other federal laws, according to two letters the Texas Secretary of State’s Office sent the Justice Department in December and released to Votebeat and The Texas Tribune.