Pennsylvania, several other states and advocacy groups are still fighting the Trump administration in court over requests for sensitive voter information — a case likely to pick up steam now that the month-plus federal government shutdown has ended.

Al Schmidt, the Secretary of the Commonwealth, wrote to the Department of Justice in August, suggesting the federal government's request for voter registrants' full names, birthdates, addresses, driver's licenses or last four digits of their Social Security numbers amounted to an "attempt to expand the federal government's role in our country's electoral process."

The DOJ then sued Pennsylvania along with California, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New York in September.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time that "clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections," and states that don't ensure registration records are "accurate, accessible and secure" will see the DOJ in court.

Schmidt, Gov. Josh Shapiro, election law experts and advocacy groups that have since joined the case say the administration's demands are unprecedented. They also say the request for sensitive information would force state leaders to not only violate state law but endanger voters' privacy.

"There's nothing in federal law authorizing the DOJ to collect massive amounts of data on hundreds of millions of Americans," David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, told the Post-Gazette. "There's no precedent."

Becker suggested that the Privacy Act of 1974 "precludes the DOJ" from collecting such data outside of specific instances and with transparency to the public and oversight from Congress. He added that the DOJ has not made fully clear what the data will be used for, how it will be stored and protected, who will have access and what will happen with it when the government finishes its review.

The information demanded is the "holy trinity of identity theft," and its release to the feds could do "untold damage," Becker said.

Bondi and the DOJ's complaint against Pennsylvania said the National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 authorizes the administration to ensure "proper and effective voter registration" and "to demand the production, inspection and analysis of the statewide voter registration lists."

"Defendants have failed to comply with the important mandates of the NVRA and HAVA by refusing to provide necessary information to enable the United States to assess its compliance," the DOJ said. The agency said one purpose of NVRA is to "protect the integrity of the electoral process" and to ensure accurate and current registration rolls are maintained.

The Justice Department also asked Pennsylvania to share information about election officials, duplicate registrations, and removal procedures for ineligible voters such as noncitizens or felons. The agency alleges the state "does not appear to have any process in place to make any determination about whether there are non-citizens on the voter rolls." Schmidt said that claim is "factually inaccurate."

2020 election root cause

Critics of the administration say the DOJ's suit is built around President Donald Trump's and his allies' repeated false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election. Pennsylvania and other swing states in 2020 flipped to send Democrat Joe Biden to the White House.

Local, state and federal officials — including many Republicans and Trump's previous attorney general — have long said that America's elections are secure, and that no widespread fraud impacted the 2020 election.

"That's particularly true in Pennsylvania," Becker said, noting the state — and almost all others — have increasingly recorded votes on verifiable paper ballots.

That means election workers don't have to rely "on the technology being perfect — and machines are not being hacked, there's no evidence of that, but sometimes it malfunctions," he said.

"By every objective measurement, our elections use more paper ballots ... than any time since the 19th century," he added. "And our voter lists are more accurate than ever."

Becker previously directed the elections program at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where he led development of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization of election officials across the country that has helped states update tens of millions of outdated voter records and securely register new eligible voters.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for an update on the case.

The Pennsylvania State Department this week referred the Post-Gazette to a previous statement from Schmidt. He called the DOJ's lawsuit "baseless," and said the state "will vigorously fight the federal government's overreach."

"The Department of Justice is welcome to the public information that we make available, according to the Pennsylvania laws, for 8.8 million registered voters," Mr. Schmidt recently told PBS. "What we will not provide is the Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers. And that's because it's at odds with state law, it's at odds with federal law, and it's at odds with our Constitution here in Pennsylvania."

The secretary also said the automatic voter registration system implemented by the Shapiro administration "prevents noncitizens from ever interfacing with the voter registration process when getting a driver's license, if they are eligible."

Shapiro, in a post on X before the DOJ's complaint, wrote that "Your private personal data belongs to you — not the federal government. It's our sacred obligation to protect your confidential information, and we're going to do just that."

The League of Women Voters and Common Cause, nonprofits focused on voter advocacy, and a handful of Pennsylvania voters whose mail ballots were challenged in previous years filed motions in October seeking to become defendants in the case.

"Some of the same actors who facilitated these (previous) illegitimate attacks on Pennsylvania voters are working for the United States to promote 'election integrity' through database-matching and analysis," attorneys for the groups wrote.

The voters and nonprofits said they want to ensure DOJ's request for "unfettered and total access to the most sensitive aspects of Pennsylvania's non-public voter data will not be used to harass and potentially disenfranchise voters."

The Pennsylvania Alliance for Retired Americans and the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights organization, have also filed motions in the case.

"This legal assault not only intrudes upon Pennsylvania's constitutional prerogative to maintain and protect its own voter registration list — it tramples the privacy rights of individual Pennsylvanians who have good reason to fear their personal information being handed over to the federal government," wrote attorneys for PARA.

The retired Pennsylvanians group, which has more than 350,000 members, argued that while the National Voter Registration Act requires states to allow public inspection of certain records, courts have consistently held that "nothing" bars states from redacting "highly sensitive personal information" such as driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

'Government-sanctioned voter intimidation'

Meanwhile, the Help America Vote Act cited by DOJ "has no disclosure provisions at all, and DOJ's complaint and letters cite no case law or other authority" for its "radical proposition," PARA attorneys wrote.

Anthony Ashton, a senior attorney for the NAACP, wrote in a filing last month that if the DOJ succeeds in obtaining the voter information, it will instill "fear of government mishandling or weaponization of such data, including through improper removal of voters from the rolls."

"Such efforts amount to government-sanctioned voter intimidation," he said.

Ashton added that his concerns were exacerbated by the administration's targeting of "people with whom it disagrees, or whose voices it thinks should be silenced, by using any and all information and resources within its possession against such people."

He cited the disclosure of New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill's military records and sensitive information, and efforts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to obtain Americans' Social Security data.

The case was put on hold last month "due to the lapse in certain appropriations" during the government shutdown, according to court records. But the president Wednesday signed a Senate- and House-approved spending package to reopen the federal government.

Indiana and Wyoming are the only states that have provided the DOJ with "full statewide voter registration lists," according to the Brennan Center for Justice

While he says he's just following the law, Mr. Schmidt told PBS he's heard "gratitude" for refusing to hand over the information to the administration.

"From Democrats and Republicans alike," he said.

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