Washington’s secretary of state on Tuesday denied the Trump administration’s request for personal information contained in the state’s voter rolls, saying to hand over the data would violate state and federal law.
Secretary Steve Hobbs told the Department of Justice he would be willing to provide voter names, addresses, genders, years of birth, voting records, registration dates and registration numbers. But he wouldn’t give dates of birth, driver license numbers and the last four digits of social security numbers. He wrote that information is protected under Washington law.
“As Washington state’s chief elections officer, I take my duty to protect voters and the sensitive information they entrust to the state very seriously,” Hobbs said in a statement. “While we will provide the DOJ with the voter registration data that state law already makes public, we will not compromise the privacy of Washington voters by turning over confidential information that both state and federal law prohibit us from disclosing.”
Hobbs’ position sets the stage for another legal clash between the state and the Trump administration.
Last week, the Justice Department sued Oregon and Maine for rejecting its demand for personal information contained in the states’ voter rolls.
The Justice Department requested the voter data from Washington two weeks ago amid its ongoing search for evidence to back up President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud caused by immigrants without legal status voting. Similar letters have gone to many states.
It’s one of several ways the Trump administration has pushed to get state data it otherwise wouldn’t receive.
Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil rights division, cited compliance with the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act as the reason for the request for Washington’s confidential data. Specifically, Dhillon said she wanted to ensure the state was adequately updating its voter list.
But Hobbs, a Democrat who oversees the state’s elections, worried “this is not the real reason for your request,” he wrote in his response Tuesday.
Hobbs fears the information would be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to fuel the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. He notes that the information he is willing to give “should be more than sufficient to assess Washington’s list maintenance efforts.”
Hobbs is also concerned the collection could violate federal privacy law. He asked Dhillon, a former legal adviser to Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, to explain how the request complies with such laws, and for clarification on how the data would be used.
“In addition to ensuring that Washington’s voter registration list complies with all applicable federal and state laws, my obligation also includes protecting Washington voters from unnecessary and illegitimate intrusions on their privacy,” Hobbs wrote.
A U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson said in an emailed statement that Congress gave the department authority under federal law to “ensure that states have proper voter registration procedures and programs to maintain clean voter rolls containing only eligible voters in federal elections.”
“The recent request by the Civil Rights Division for state voter rolls is pursuant to that statutory authority, and the responsive data is being screened for ineligible voter entries,” the spokesperson added.
Hobbs closed his letter with a link to where the Department of Justice can request Washington’s public voter registration list. Such data is often requested by news outlets and political parties.
Trump has also attacked the vote-by-mail election system Washington and other states have chosen. He has threatened via executive order to withhold federal funding to states that don’t comply with dramatic rule changes, like requiring documentation of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. The order signed in March also seeks to prevent states from counting ballots received after Election Day.
Attorneys general in Washington and Oregon sued over the order. The case is ongoing in federal court in Seattle.
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