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Judge dismisses Department of Justice lawsuit seeking Pennsylvania voters’ private information

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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

What happened?
A federal district judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice seeking a copy of the state’s voter roll containing voters’ personal identifying information.

“Public statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a “fishing expedition,” hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement,” Cathy Bissoon, district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, wrote in a decision Saturday.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for access to state voter rolls containing personal information such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.

What’s the dispute?
The department sued Pennsylvania in September. The Justice Department has said it is seeking the nonpublic information in order to ensure states are complying with federal voter registration laws. In December, the Pennsylvania Department of State urged the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the laws the Justice Department was citing — the Help America Vote Act and National Voter Registration Act — don’t actually give them authority to demand the nonpublic versions of the voter rolls, and that the specific information the Justice Department sought was unnecessary to accomplish its objectives.

The Justice Department has submitted requests to every state. Seventeen Republican-led states, including Alaska and Texas, have voluntarily turned the unredacted rolls over. Other states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, have opted to provide only the publicly available versions of the voter rolls, which do not contain driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers, citing privacy concerns and state laws barring such disclosure. So far, federal judges have ruled against the Justice Department in nine states, including Oregon, California, and Michigan.

What happens now?
The Pennsylvania Department of State did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Justice Department also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling or whether it plans to appeal. The department has appealed similar rulings in some, but not all, other states. The first of those appeals, in Michigan, was recently decided, and agreed that the state did not have to share its data.

Source: Votebeat

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