The U.S. Department of Justice has requested information about the removal of non-citizens from voter registration lists from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder — including sensitive data, such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers and birth dates.
The ask, sent to the county registrar last month, follows a slew of similar Justice Department requests to election officials in at least 19 other states, seeking information about voter fraud and non-citizen voting.
President Donald Trump, who has often repeated false claims of voter fraud since his 2020 election loss, has made voting reform a key fixture of his second term in office. The president signed an executive order in March that would institute sweeping changes to existing voting laws, and the Justice Department, under the Trump administration, has moved to crack down on voter fraud and non-citizen voting.
The Justice Department’s request to the Los Angeles County registrar, meanwhile, asks for “records showing the number of voter registration records in the County of Los Angeles cancelled because the registrant did not satisfy the citizenship requirements for voter records,” according to the July 9 letter — from the present, all the way back until Jan. 1, 2020.
And more than that, the request asks for the registration application, voter registration record, voting history, birth date, driver’s license or state identification number, and the last four digits of the Social Security number for each person identified as having had their registration cancelled for not meeting citizenship requirements.
The LA County registrar oversees federal, local and state elections, voter registration and maintenance of voter files, among other responsibilities in a county with more than 5.8 million registered voters.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the county registrar, said the office is reviewing records and data for its response to the Justice Department, which could come as late as the end of this month.
Los Angeles County isn’t alone in receiving such a request from the Justice Department.
The Orange County registrar of voters recently became the subject of a lawsuit after the department accused the county’s election official, Bob Page, of not providing the full records requested by the Justice Department.
Page had responded to the request but redacted sensitive, personal information, including driver’s license or state ID numbers, Social Security numbers, and more. Still, the registrar attempted to transmit the more sensitive data to the Justice Department in a way that would include “assurances that such sensitive personal identifiers will remain confidential and be used for government purposes only,” according to correspondence between the DOJ and legal counsel for the registrar, reviewed by the Southern California News Group.
Representatives for the California secretary of state, which oversees election procedures, said previously that state election officials are not legally allowed to release certain sensitive information, including driver’s license numbers.
While the Justice Department gave LA County Registrar Dean Logan just two weeks to provide all records responsive to its July 9 request, Logan has since responded, saying it will take until at least Aug. 30 for the records to be collected.
Logan also called into question the Justice Department’s legal authority to ask for the data it has requested.
The Justice Department cited a few provisions of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 as the legal basis of its request — which set parameters requiring the following:
• States to register people to vote if they receive a valid registration form in the allowed time frame;
• States to remove voters from eligible voting lists due to death or address changes;
• States to remove ineligible voters from voting lists due to felony status or death;
• Voter registrations be processed with a driver’s license number, state identification number, the last four digits of a Social Security number or with a unique identification number if no license, state ID or Social Security number exists.
“Based off our review of these statutory provisions, none are specific to or authorize the current request for records pertaining to removal of voters due to citizenship status,” Logan said in his response to the Justice Department. “To address your letter, we kindly ask you to clarify the legal authority for the request by providing specific statutory basis for the requested records and the purpose of the request.”
The Justice Department’s letter also maintained it has “enforcement authority” over certain NVRA and HAVA provisions, including the right to request citizenship-related information from the county — though the county also questioned that assertion.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to answer questions about its legal authority to request the data from the county registrar or its intended use of the sensitive information.
Maureen Riordan, senior counsel with the Justice Department who requested the information of the county registrar, also did not respond to requests for comment.
Staff writer Linh Tat and The Associated Press contributed to this report.