DOJ loses bid to get access to D.C. voting lists
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesA federal judge on Thursday rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to get a look at the District’s full voter list, ruling that the administration lacked the legal power to force the city to turn over names, birthdates, identity numbers and other information.
District Judge Randolph Moss, an Obama appointee, said the Civil Rights Act of 1960 would have let the attorney general request individual voter registrations, but not the city’s own current list.
The case is the latest in a string of losses for Trump’s team on the issue. Judges from across the ideological spectrum have said the administration isn’t entitled to states’ full lists, including nonpublic information.
Judge Moss said if DOJ wants the information, “it needs to lodge that objection with Congress.”
The DOJ is seeking the data so it can run the names through its own databases and try to spot ineligible voters, including those who are dead and who aren’t citizens.
Washington gave the feds its public list, but that lacks the driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers that would allow for firm identity comparisons to federal records.
The DOJ, in its lawsuit, cited the 1960 law as the basis for its demand.
That law, passed in the civil rights era, was intended to give the Justice Department tools to expose shenanigans in states that were trying to suppress Black voters.
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The law gives the attorney general power to compel production from state election officers of “all records and papers which come into his possession relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax or other act requisite to voting.”
The DOJ argued that the lists are registration records that fall under the law.
But Judge Moss — and 15 other judges who examined the issue in other states that DOJ targeted — said the lists are built by states from registration records. Since those are state creations, they don’t “come into” possession of elections officials, hence not covered by the 1960 law.
Judge Moss said later laws, including the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, didn’t change that fact.
“The court concludes that Title III’s retention and preservation obligation does not cover voter registration lists,” the judge wrote.
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Similar DOJ requests for records from Maryland and Virginia also failed. Trump-appointed judges ruled in both of those cases.
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Stephen Dinan
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