Justice Department sues Connecticut and Arizona over requests for voter data

The U.S. Justice Department has sued Connecticut and Arizona over requests for detailed voter information, the Justice Department said, as officials in both states defended their refusal to provide the records.

The lawsuits, announced this week by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, accuse the states of failing to comply with the department’s requests. The civil-rights effort has expanded as the department has brought additional actions aimed at obtaining voter data from states, bringing the total to 23 states sued, the department said. The Justice Department has also filed a separate suit against the District of Columbia.

Arizona’s response was immediate and dismissive. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes posted on X that releasing the voter records would violate state and federal law, writing “Pound sand.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department will keep pursuing the cases to protect American elections, adding that accurate voter rolls are the ”foundation of election integrity.”

Connecticut and Arizona officials said they refused the requests based on concerns about both federal privacy requirements and state limits on what voter information can be released publicly. They said the Justice Department’s demand would run afoul of federal privacy law that protects the sharing of individual data with the government and would also violate state laws restricting what voter information can be made public.

The Justice Department sought some voter data that includes names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Other requests included basic questions about the procedures states use to comply with federal voting laws, while some were more tailored to individual states and referenced perceived inconsistencies from a survey conducted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The lawsuits are part of a broader pattern that most often targets states led by Democrats, according to the reporting. Democratic secretaries of state have said they have been unable to get a firm answer about why the Justice Department wants the information and how it plans to use it. Last fall, 10 Democratic secretaries of state sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security expressing concern after DHS said it had received voter data and would enter it into a federal program used to verify citizenship status.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, said the state tried to work cooperatively with the Justice Department to understand the basis for its request for voters’ personal information. After the lawsuit was filed, Tong said, “Rather than communicating productively with us, they rushed to sue.” He said Connecticut “takes its obligations under federal laws very seriously” and pledged to “vigorously defend the state against this meritless and deeply disappointing lawsuit.”

While the dispute has largely drawn pushback from Democrats in Connecticut, two Republican state senators in the state welcomed the federal lawsuit. They cited a recent absentee ballot scandal in Bridgeport, saying it had made the state a “national punchline.”