Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore on Tuesday told the Trump Administration he wouldn’t provide the state’s full voter rolls, which include personally identifiable information.
In a letter to an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division, Amore said he would provide the DOJ with voter information that is already publicly available, but that he objected to sending all fields of the voter rolls, which include information like a voter’s state driver’s license number and the last four digits of a voter’s social security number.
Amore met with Justice Department officials in early September and on Sept. 8, a lawyer in the Civil Rights division requested a copy of Rhode Island’s statewide voter registration list, with all fields included.
On Tuesday, Amore said that federal laws cited by the DOJ, such as 2002’s Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1960, do not grant the Justice Department the right to obtain state data outside specific contexts like litigation or in the course of a civil rights investigation.
In a statement, Amore said he viewed the request as undermining the state’s election process.
“The current presidential administration has a long track record of seeking to, and in some cases, succeeding in, interfering in the operation of elections and sowing seeds of distrust between the general voting public and the very election processes that maintain and further our democracy,” Amore said.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
Amore sent the letter on the same day the Justice Department announced it was suing Maine and Oregon for not providing voter rolls.
The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system, according to NPR. The Justice Department has requested statewide voter registration lists from at least 27 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
“Registering to vote requires the provision of personal information – and that information is provided with the trust and understanding that the government here in Rhode Island will do everything in our power to protect it,” Amore said in a statement. “This is not a responsibility I take lightly.”
