FRANKFORT — Kentucky has received a request from the U.S. Department of Justice for voter registration data, including sensitive information such as driver’s license and Social Security numbers, but so far has supplied only publicly available information, says the state’s top election official.
In a recent interview with the Kentucky Lantern, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said the DOJ requested “the entirety of the voter file, including personal identifying information, driver’s license and social security number.”
Adams’ office “thought we had an obligation to respond,” he continued. After review, his office concluded that the DOJ would be entitled under the law to a voter information file that candidates often request to build information to contact voters before an election. The file includes information like party affiliation, street address, birth year and more.
Adams said that his office did not give driver’s licenses or Social Security numbers to the DOJ.
He added that his office and the DOJ have “been going back and forth a little bit on what the law says.” Adams said both election and privacy laws figure into the determination.
“We’ve not really figured out exactly where that line is of what all they’re entitled to,” Adams said. “What’s not in dispute is they’re entitled to the vast majority of information — people’s names, addresses, birthdays — and we’ve given them all of that.”
Many state officials “are in the same boat of trying to figure out what exactly they need to do their job and what our obligations are legally,” Adams added.
“I certainly don’t want to create legal exposure for myself or my staff. I don’t want to break a data breach law,” Adams said. “I don’t want to break a privacy law. There are state laws or federal laws way beyond the elections that we’re trying to understand to make sure that we comply.”
Saying the requests are about ensuring election integrity, the Trump administration has issued similar requests to other states and later given the data to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
DOJ officials began asking states for voter information data earlier this year. The DOJ has since shared voter roll information with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to search for noncitizens. Homeland Security is building out a powerful citizenship verification program, and touting it as a way to ensure election integrity.
The DOJ has sued at least 18 states so far seeking access to voter registration lists with sensitive personal information.
A DOJ spokesperson told the Lantern that the department is entitled to access to the voter rolls in their entirety under federal laws, such as the National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote Act, the Civil Rights Act, and more “to ensure that states have proper voter registration procedures and programs to maintain clean voter rolls containing only eligible voters in federal elections.” The spokesperson added that the data from states would be “screened for ineligible voter entries.”
In a statement to the Lantern, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ said the department’s civil rights division “has a statutory mandate to enforce our federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the voting public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration.”
“Clean voter rolls and basic election safeguards are requisites for free, fair, and transparent elections,” Dhillon said.
Joshua A. Douglas, an election law expert and University of Kentucky professor, told the Lantern in an email the DOJ’s request “is very rare” but the first Trump administration also attempted to collect sensitive data via the U.S. Census.
“The key point for people to know here is that the federal government does not administer elections. The U.S. Constitution says that states determine the ‘times, places and manner’ of running federal elections, and that Congress can make or alter those rules,” Douglas said. “There is no provision that gives the president (or, by extension, the DOJ) any authority to determine election rules. Also, the states, not the DOJ, has the expertise in their voter rolls.”
Douglas also countered the DOJ claim that the request for data is to make elections more secure.
“Elections are already very secure,” he said. “A DOJ request for state voter rolls will not make them any more secure.”
Adams, who is currently serving his second term as Kentucky’s secretary of state, has focused on election integrity and removing ineligible voters, such as those who are deceased, from the state’s voter registration list.
While he thinks the issue will be litigated in other states, Adams was not sure if it would go to court in Kentucky.
“I certainly don’t think that we’re targeted here. We’ve done a great job getting our rolls cleaned up,” Adams said. “I think we have the best story in America to tell about taking dirty rolls and getting them clean. But this is not being seen through a state-by-state prism. It’s a national thing.”
Amber Duke, the executive director of the ACLU-KY, said in a statement that the organization was appreciative of Adam’s response and providing “only Kentucky’s publicly available voter information.”
“Protecting voter privacy is critical to a healthy democracy,” Duke said. “Any request for voter information must be narrowly limited and should never include highly sensitive personal data like Social Security or driver’s license numbers.”
This article was originally published by the Kentucky Lantern.
