The Department of Justice’s scoreboard on its quest to force states to hand over voter rolls reads 0-21. The NAACP is telling a federal judge to make it 0-22.
The DOJ sued Utah in February to force the state to turn over the complete, unredacted voter database, including full names, birthdates, addresses and either a driver’s license number or partial Social Security numbers, under the banner of “election integrity.” The department argues the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires election officials to turn over those records upon a written request from the attorney general, and that compliance is not optional.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said no, citing privacy and security concerns, and offered only what’s already public.
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The DOJ has filed similar suits against 29 states and Washington, D.C. Twenty-one have already been tossed, including recent losses in Washington, D.C., Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey and Illinois. Suits against Colorado and New Mexico, which are in the same federal judicial district as Utah, have been dismissed, too.
In March, the NAACP and the NAACP Tri-State Conference of Utah, Idaho and Nevada joined the Utah lawsuit, arguing that handing over unredacted voter data would chill their voter registration efforts and put minority communities at risk.
In Thursday’s filing, the NAACP told the court that 21 federal courts have rejected the DOJ’s claims for unredacted voter lists and that the reasoning in those rulings matches their arguments in Utah.
Henderson has been keeping a running tally of the DOJ’s losing streak on social media. After the 20th loss, in Colorado, she wrote: “This is a sinking ship for DOJ. Also, Colorado and New Mexico, whose cases have now both been dismissed, are in the same federal court district as Utah. Our case is still pending, but I have no reason to believe Utah’s outcome will be any different than the 20 states in a row that have had rulings in their favor.”
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On Thursday, after the Washington, D.C., dismissal, she was blunt.
“0-21,” she wrote. “What the DOJ is demanding of states isn’t legal. Enough already.”
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In another court filing last month, Henderson pointed to six other suits that had already been dismissed, arguing Utah's case should be thrown out as well. The DOJ's response: those courts got it wrong.
No hearing date has been set.
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