Common Cause Moves for Partial Summary Judgment to Block DOJ's National Voter Database

Common Cause, joined by the ACLU and Protect Democracy, moved for partial summary judgment on May 19, 2026 in Common Cause v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 1:26-cv-01352-SLS (D.D.C.), filed April 21. The motion asks the court to block DOJ from compiling a national voter database before the November midterms.

What DOJ demanded is the specific thing at issue: unredacted statewide voter registration lists from nearly every state and the District of Columbia — files that can contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers. Plaintiffs characterize the initiative as a voter surveillance and purge system.

DOJ responded on June 2 with a motion to dismiss or, alternatively, for summary judgment of its own. Both sides were therefore asking the court to resolve the case without trial, which is what a plaintiff does when the facts are not really in dispute and the question is whether the statute permits the conduct.

Why the procedural posture matters more than it usually does. A summary-judgment motion filed in May, on a case filed in April, over conduct aimed at a November election, is a race against a calendar rather than ordinary litigation pacing. The plaintiffs’ own framing — seeking a ruling “before the 2026 midterms” — concedes that a correct decision arriving after the election would not restore what the election consumed. This corpus has recorded the same shape at USPS, at EPA, and across the detention buildout: the operative question is not whether the challenged action is lawful but whether a court can reach it in time.

The subsequent record shows the answer was mixed. Judge Sooknanan blocked the DOGE-built SAVE database as unlawful on June 22. By August 6, five DOJ suits had been dismissed while twelve states had already complied — which is the asymmetry worth holding: a dismissal returns nothing, and the data handed over before the ruling stays handed over. By September 10, DOJ was sending preservation letters to 29 states and DC warning election officials of criminal sanctions.

The state count: three sources, three numbers

The capture ledger claimed DOJ demanded files from “at least 47 states.” Checked 2026-09-14, that figure is real but is one of several in circulation, and they do not agree:

The Brennan Center tracker is the closest thing to a primary list — it records requests state by state with a per-state map rather than publishing an aggregate, which is why its number is a floor (“at least”) and why it moves as requests are documented. NBC’s higher figure and EPIC’s lower one are both plausible readings of a moving target: whether a jurisdiction counts depends on whether an informal request, a formal demand letter, or a filed suit is the threshold, and none of the three sources states its threshold.

So no single count is carried in this entry’s prose. Per corpus discipline the right move is to parse the tracker state by state for a specific number at a specific date, not to inherit any of these. What all three agree on is the shape: DOJ approached nearly every state, most refused, a minority complied, and DOJ sued roughly thirty jurisdictions.

The compliance figures diverge the same way — 12 (ACLU), 16 (Brennan, Aug 24), 17 (NBC, Jul 13), with DOJ itself reportedly claiming as many as 19. The Brennan and NBC lists overlap heavily but not exactly; NBC includes Missouri, Kansas and Montana, which Brennan’s August list does not, while Brennan includes Alabama, which NBC’s does not. A named-state comparison across the two lists would resolve it and has not been done here.

Sourcing note. The filing date, case number, court, parties and the nature of the demanded records are confirmed across Democracy Docket, Common Cause’s own release, and the ACLU of DC, with the motion itself public. The motion PDF was not read in full — its specific counts and requested relief are as characterized by the filing parties. No ruling on either summary-judgment motion has been recorded here; the capture ledger’s companion story claiming DOJ demanded files from “at least 47 states” with “twelve states voluntarily complied” is not carried into this entry, as the 47-state figure was not verified and the twelve-state figure is already recorded at 2026-08-06 with its own sourcing.