The personal data of millions of American voters sits at the center of an escalating legal and political battle. In their latest commentary for StateScoop, Athena Strategies President Kathy Boockvar and John Lindback, a fellow at the Institute for Responsive Government, examine what is at stake — and why the outcome matters for every American.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has sought access to states’ voter registration databases, including voters’ most sensitive personally identifiable information: Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and driver’s license numbers. When states declined, citing their own privacy laws and the absence of any explanation for how the data would be used, the Department of Justice responded with lawsuits against 29 states and the District of Columbia. Courts have repeatedly — and, the authors argue, correctly — dismissed them.
Writing as former long-time election officials, Boockvar and Lindback bring a practitioner’s perspective to a dispute too often framed in purely partisan terms. Their analysis distills the controversy to three core issues: constitutional authority, data privacy, and voter protection.
The constitutional question, they note, was settled at the founding. Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution assigns authority over the administration of elections to the states, and permits only Congress — not the president — to alter those rules. This decentralized structure is not an accident of history but a deliberate design: the officials closest to voters are best positioned to evaluate eligibility, secure election systems, and protect the integrity of voter data.
A bipartisan group of former secretaries of state, filing an amicus brief in several of the cases, warned that permitting the executive branch to unilaterally rewrite election guidelines would be equivalent to “dropping an anvil onto the carefully balanced scales of justice.”
The data privacy and voter protection concerns are equally pressing. At a time of increasingly sophisticated identity theft and cyber threats, the administration has not explained how it intends to use this vast repository of personal data, who will have access to it, or what safeguards will protect it from misuse or breach.
Boockvar and Lindback emphasize what the issue is — and isn’t — about:
“What is being contested is not whether voter rolls should be accurate — all agree they must. The issue is whether the president can upend the constitutional framework of our nation’s elections — without statutory authorization, safeguards or transparency — and sacrifice the protection of voters’ sensitive PII as a casualty of this effort.”
And they conclude: state and local jurisdictions must continue to shield voters’ private information with unwavering vigilance.
Read the full commentary on StateScoop: States are right to push back on the DOJ’s pursuit of voter data