Beginning in May 2025, the Department of Justice sent demand letters to at least 44 states and the District of Columbia demanding full, unredacted voter registration rolls — including driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The letters invoked Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which permits the attorney general to request "all records and papers" kept by state election officials relating to voter registration. The DOJ claimed it needed the data to investigate potential voter fraud, turning a law designed to protect Black voters in the Jim Crow South into a tool for mass voter surveillance.
The request was unprecedented in scope and sensitivity. Most states refused to provide unredacted records, instead offering publicly available versions of their voter files. At least 12 states complied with full data including SSNs: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. Beginning in September 2025, the DOJ sued 24 states and jurisdictions that refused to hand over the sensitive data.
Courts began pushing back — judges in California and Oregon rejected the DOJ's claims to unredacted files — but the campaign continued to escalate. By April 2026, the DOJ was preparing to share state voter data with DHS, prompting the resignation of a key DOJ privacy officer. The voter data demand campaign was the opening move in a broader strategy that would culminate in the March 31, 2026 executive order directing DHS and SSA to compile a national list of "verified eligible voters."