Months after federal officials demanded voter data from Colorado and several other states, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and several peers are trying to determine what exactly the Trump administration is doing with the data.
“As Secretaries of State and chief election officials of our respective states, we write to express our immense concern with recent reporting that the Department of Justice has shared voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, and to seek clarity on whether DOJ and DHS actively misled election officials regarding the uses of voter data,” Griswold and nine other secretaries of state wrote in a letter sent Tuesday morning.
It was addressed to Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, and Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary.
Bondi’s Justice Department sent letters to Colorado and other states in the spring asking for voter rolls and, in some cases, it has sought more detailed data, including partial social security numbers and birth dates.
The state officials’ new letter asks Bondi and Noem whether the voter rolls were shared with Noem’s department, which has served as the tip of the spear in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, or any others. The secretaries of state who signed on are all Democrats.
Colorado provided some of the information requested by the Justice Department as required by law, Griswold said in an interview Monday. Other states, particularly those tasked with turning over more extensive voter data, refused; six of them have since been sued by the federal government.
Griswold said federal officials had provided shifting answers on whether the Homeland Security Department had been given access to the data that had been turned over to the DOJ, including from Colorado.
Heather Honey, the agency’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, told the secretaries of state in September that DHS hadn’t received or asked for the data, according to the secretaries’ letter. But the next day, the agency confirmed to Stateline that it was collaborating with the Justice Department to “scrub aliens from voter rolls.”
Six weeks later, on Halloween, the agency posted an administrative update indicating it was expanding a tool — used previously to ensure federal benefits don’t go to immigrants without proper legal status — to check voting rolls.
“We would like the attorney general and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to explain what they’re doing collecting mass voter data on American voters,” Griswold said. “It also looks like the DOJ or DHS misled secretaries of state.”
Griswold said some of her staff members also had a brief conversation with officials from the Justice Department’s criminal division earlier this summer. The federal officials asked if Colorado election officials had a way to report election crimes to the state attorney general, Griswold’s office said. State officials replied that they did, and the conversation ended.
The state officials request a response from Bondi and Noem by Dec. 1.
In addition to Colorado, the secretaries of state from California, Minnesota, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Maine, Vermont, Oregon and Washington also signed the letter.
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