DOJ Sues for Voter Data: Privacy or Politics?
By Darius Spearman (africanelements)
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a series of aggressive legal actions against multiple jurisdictions, including Wisconsin, Illinois, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. The central demand in these lawsuits is access to unredacted voter data. While the government claims this information is necessary to enforce federal election laws, civil rights groups and privacy advocates are sounding the alarm. They argue that handing over sensitive personal information—such as driver’s license numbers and social security details—poses a severe risk to voter privacy and could lead to intimidation (justice.gov, justice.gov).
This legal battle is not just a bureaucratic dispute over paperwork. It represents a significant shift in how the federal government interacts with state election officials. Historically, laws regarding voter rolls were designed to protect citizens from being unfairly removed from the list. Now, those same laws are being used to demand the raw data of millions of Americans. Critics suggest that this move could create a national database of voters, something that Congress has previously refused to authorize due to privacy concerns (protectdemocracy.org).
To understand the danger, one must look at the troubling history of black voter disenfranchisement in the United States. Access to voter names and addresses has often been used as a weapon rather than a tool for integrity. As the administration pushes for these records, the Black community and other minority groups find themselves asking whether this is about cleaning up voter rolls or suppressing the vote.
States usually hide this data. The DOJ lawsuit demands the black bars be removed.
The Definition of Unredacted
When the DOJ asks for “unredacted” data, they are asking for information that is usually kept private to protect citizens from identity theft. In the context of voter files, “redaction” is the process of blocking out sensitive numbers before a document is shown to the public. This usually applies to Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and sometimes personal email addresses. The lawsuits filed against states like Wisconsin and Illinois specifically seek to bypass these protections (justice.gov, thomsonreuters.com).
The government argues that it needs these full numbers to verify who is on the voter rolls. Without unique identifiers like a Social Security number, it is difficult to distinguish between two people who have the same name. For example, a “James Brown” in Georgia might be a different person than a “James Brown” in Florida. The DOJ claims that without the unredacted data, they cannot accurately enforce the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) or check for ineligible voters (justice.gov).
However, privacy experts warn that compiling this data into a single federal database creates a massive security risk. If a database containing the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of millions of voters were to be hacked, the consequences would be catastrophic. Furthermore, states have their own privacy laws that specifically forbid the release of this data. Officials in Georgia and Maine have pushed back, citing their duty to protect their residents’ private information from federal overreach (thomsonreuters.com).
A History of Weaponizing Lists
The fear of releasing voter lists is rooted in history. During the Jim Crow era, the publication of voter names was often used to target Black citizens who dared to register. In the 1940s and 1950s, newspapers in the South would publish the names and addresses of new Black registrants. This “doxing” allowed employers to fire them and hate groups like the KKK to terrorize them at their homes. This history makes the challenges faced by African American families regarding voting safety very real (aaihs.org).
More recently, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was under a “consent decree” for nearly forty years. This legal agreement prevented the RNC from engaging in “ballot security” measures without court approval. The decree stemmed from a 1981 lawsuit where the RNC allegedly used voter lists to send mailers to Black and Latino neighborhoods. When letters were returned undelivered, the RNC used that list to challenge voters at the polls, a tactic described as voter intimidation. With that consent decree now expired, the federal government’s demand for unredacted lists raises old fears of similar tactics returning (projectvote.org).
The DOJ cites the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as its authority to inspect these records. Ironically, that law was written to help the federal government find discrimination against Black voters. Federal agents used it to prove that white officials were purging Black voters illegally. Today, critics argue the law is being flipped upside down. Instead of using the law to protect minority voters from being purged, the current lawsuits use it to scrutinize the voter rolls, potentially leading to mass removals (govinfo.gov, protectdemocracy.org).
The Threat of Mass Purges
One of the main reasons the DOJ is seeking this data is to conduct “list maintenance.” This is the process of removing the names of people who have moved, died, or are otherwise ineligible. While accurate lists are important, aggressive list maintenance often hurts eligible voters. When the federal government or private groups attempt to match voter lists across states, they often generate “false positives.” This happens when two different people are flagged as the same person because they share a name and birthdate (projectvote.org).
Past programs, like the Interstate Crosscheck System, demonstrated the flaws in this approach. Studies showed that for every double vote identified, the system flagged hundreds of legitimate voters. These errors disproportionately affected African American, Latino, and Asian voters because these communities often share common surnames. If the DOJ uses unredacted data to launch a similar national purge program, thousands of eligible voters could be removed from the rolls without knowing it until Election Day (aaihs.org).
The National Voter Registration Act includes a “90-day quiet period” that prevents states from systematically removing voters close to an election. This rule exists to ensure that if a mistake is made, the voter has time to fix it. However, the aggressive nature of these new lawsuits suggests a push to clean the rolls rapidly. With ongoing efforts to suppress the black vote visible in various state legislatures, federal involvement in purging adds another layer of concern (thomsonreuters.com).
Privacy Laws vs. Federal Demands
The legal conflict pits state privacy laws against federal authority. States like Maine and Georgia have refused to comply with the DOJ’s demands, arguing that their state laws forbid the release of such sensitive data. They maintain that the federal government does not have unlimited power to seize the personal records of their citizens. The DOJ counters that federal law, specifically the Civil Rights Act and the NVRA, overrides state privacy protections (justice.gov, thomsonreuters.com).
This creates a dangerous precedent. If the courts rule in favor of the DOJ, it could strip states of their ability to protect the privacy of their voters. It would effectively centralize voter data in Washington, D.C., under the control of the party in power. For many in the Black community, the idea of the federal government holding a master list of every voter, complete with home addresses and social security information, is unsettling. It recalls the “Nuremberg Files” era, where public lists were used to threaten individuals, highlighting the physical danger that comes with the loss of data privacy (protectdemocracy.org).
When databases are matched without strict controls, errors skyrocket. This impacts voters with common names the most.
Conclusion
The Justice Department’s pursuit of unredacted voter data in Wisconsin, Illinois, Georgia, and D.C. places voter privacy and election integrity on a collision course. While the stated goal is to ensure the accuracy of voter rolls, the methods used invoke a painful history of surveillance and intimidation. For African Americans, the distinction between “list maintenance” and “voter purging” has always been thin. As these lawsuits proceed, the safety of personal data and the right to vote remain in the balance (justice.gov, aaihs.org).
About the Author
Darius Spearman is a professor of Black Studies at San Diego City College, where he has been teaching for over 20 years. He is the founder of African Elements, a media platform dedicated to providing educational resources on the history and culture of the African diaspora. Through his work, Spearman aims to empower and educate by bringing historical context to contemporary issues affecting the Black community.
