“Clean voter rolls are essential to a strong democracy and electoral system that people can trust and rely on,” Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “Without clean voter rolls, you don’t really have a fundamentally strong election system.”

Kelly said the DOJ’s push is aimed at determining whether states are complying with federal requirements already in place.

“The emphasis by the Trump administration’s DOJ to make sure that states are following federal law when it comes to making sure these voter rolls are clean, accurate, and compliant is an effort that a lot of people should be proud of,” she added.

At hand is whether President Donald Trump and his administration can compel states to provide detailed registration data to verify compliance with laws requiring accurate and up-to-date voter lists. This effort has already produced lawsuits across the country and sharply divided responses from state officials, turning voter roll access into a major litigation front tied to election administration before November.

Attorney General Pam Bondi argued in a December statement that accuracy in voter rolls is the “cornerstone of fair and free elections,” while her Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, vowed to litigate challenges against non-compliant states to the fullest extent.

The legal front over federal enforcement powers

The DOJ has sued roughly two dozen states and Washington, D.C., seeking voter lists that include names, addresses, birth dates, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. Federal judges have dismissed cases against California, Michigan, and Oregon in recent weeks. Other lawsuits remain pending, according to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, said the federal statutes at issue explicitly assign enforcement authority to the DOJ, arguing there is little legal excuse for recalcitrant states.

“Both the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act have multiple provisions requiring states to take various steps to maintain the accuracy of voter rolls,” von Spakovsky told the Washington Examiner, citing the same statutes the department relies on in its litigation ballots. “DOJ is given the responsibility in both laws to enforce those requirements.”

The core legal resistance has been coordinated in part by Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, whose firm has intervened in each of the DOJ cases on behalf of voting advocacy groups.

“My law firm intervened in every case DOJ has filed to gain access to states’ sensitive voting data,” Elias wrote in a Feb. 6 statement on X. “So far we have won several and lost none. But this is going to be a long fight for free and fair elections.”

Liberal legal advocacy groups have carried water for Elias’s anti-voter data crusade. Eileen O’Connor of the Brennan Center for Justice, who disagrees with the administration’s pursuit of voter data, argued that states already have systems in place to maintain their own voter lists.

“States have the expertise and tools to keep voter lists accurate and up to date,” O’Connor wrote in an analysis last month. “The federal government has neither the authority nor the resources to conduct list maintenance.”

Minnesota ‘blackmail’ letter highlights political tensions

In one of the most controversial maneuvers tied to the broader push, Bondi was accused last month by Democrats of pressuring Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to provide the battleground state’s voter rolls.

Her office penned a letter saying that complying with the department’s request could also help end “chaos” related to protests and demonstrations over the federal immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities area.

Twenty-eight Democratic senators wrote a response criticizing the request, arguing the administration was infringing on states’ authority to run their own elections. Other party officials like Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D-AZ) called it “blackmail,” adding, “this is the way organized crime works.”

Bondi told the Minnesota governor that providing the data was among several “simple steps” Minnesota could take to “bring back law and order.” 

But Bondi’s leverage over the state has changed in recent weeks. Tensions in Minnesota have eased since White House border czar Tom Homan said the immigration enforcement crackdown would be reduced to a small “security force” earlier this week.

The main legal fight over Bondi’s request in Minnesota remains pending, with a hearing scheduled on March 3 over the state’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit.

More state cooperation is needed to fulfill Trump’s goals

At least 11 states have provided the DOJ with their full voter lists or said they plan to do so, according to the Brennan Center, while others continue to challenge the requests in court.

Nebraska is moving forward with sharing data even as litigation continues. The Nebraska Supreme Court declined earlier this month to block the transfer while expediting an appeal, with arguments scheduled for March 31.

“Nebraska is in compliance with those laws,” Secretary of State Bob Evnen said, according to the Nebraska Examiner. “I am glad that the Department of Justice is reviewing other states to be sure that they also are in compliance.”

Attorney General Kris Kobach (R-KS) has also supported turning over the information, calling it “extremely important” to identifying ineligible registrations and citing recent prosecutions in his state.

“I would not be concerned at all whether it’s a Republican or Democrat president asking for our voter rolls,” he told the Washington Post last week.

Other areas where a Republican administration would ordinarily expect easier compliance have begun to turn heads. In the predominantly Red state of Oklahoma, state officials say laws currently on the books have made it difficult to comply with the Trump administration’s requests.

“If we could legally comply, we would promptly do so,” Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax said in a letter to the Department this month, according to a local NBC affiliate. The neighboring state of Missouri has similarly cited state privacy laws as a reason why it cannot produce the voter information that’s so sought after.

Activists running parallel push to sway and alter state laws

Half the battle to secure elections is using Congress’s powers to pass better legislation, in addition to the DOJ’s push to examine state election data.

But the often-overlooked part of the fight, according to Save Election Day president Nicole Kelly, is meeting states where they are and enacting changes through lobbying for key voter protections or pushing for state ballot measures.

Kelly said her organization’s work reflects a view among election lawyers that lasting policy changes must occur at the state level, where election systems are actually administered. Her group began work only earlier this month and is expected to make battleground states a key focus, hinting that states such as Nevada would likely be among the first targets.

“As a general overview about this organization, changes in election laws have to meet at the state level, in addition to the federal level,” Kelly said. “Federal election law is somewhat limited in a sense that it only governs federal elections, but the heart, the meat and potatoes, the actual election administration operations are being operated by states.”

She added that durable reforms are more likely to come through changes to state statutes than through litigation, which can be lengthy and often outlast an election cycle, or through federal action alone.

“Making sure that state law is the best that it can possibly be should be a priority for election law practitioners and those interested in making sure that we have honest, verifiable, and trustworthy elections,” said Kelly.

Broader policy fight happening alongside DOJ lawsuits

The courtroom battles are unfolding as Congress also considers the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and establish a nationwide photo identification requirement. The measure has passed the House but faces uncertainty in the Senate.

Despite the lack of bipartisanship in Congress, polling shows far more support nationally. A Pew Research Center survey last August found 60% of voters strongly favor requiring government-issued photo identification to vote, with another 23% somewhat favoring it.

While lawmakers debate national standards, DOJ’s lawsuits represent the administration’s most immediate test of how far federal enforcement authority can reach into state election systems.

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For secure election proponents like Von Spakovsky, he said the outcome of the DOJ’s data retrieval efforts could ultimately be determined by whether courts allow the required statutory election responsibilities to be carried out.

“That can’t be done when states refuse to give complete voter rolls information to DOJ,” he said, adding that in his view, “The judges ruling against DOJ are in essence refusing to enforce federal law.”