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The Justice Department filed 23 lawsuits against 22 states for allegedly failing to comply with federal voter roll verification laws, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon announced Monday.
The department’s Civil Rights Division began the enforcement effort in mid-September, suing Oregon and Maine, along with their secretaries of state, for failing to provide the required information on voter list maintenance procedures and electronic copies of their statewide voter registration databases.
“States simply cannot pick and choose which federal laws they will comply with, including our voting laws, which ensure that all American citizens have equal access to the ballot in federal elections,” Dhillon said in a statement.
“American citizens have a right to feel confident in the integrity of our electoral process, and the refusal of certain states to protect their citizens against vote dilution will result in legal consequences,” she continued.
Later in September, the Trump administration expanded the legal effort by filing additional lawsuits against six states, including California, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania, after officials there allegedly failed to turn over voter registration records requested by the department.
“A few months ago I started this process of requesting the voter rolls from all the states and territories in the United States and asked them to share them with us so that we can help these states compare voter rolls against our government data and clean their voter rolls as the requirement states under federal law, the Help America Vote Act, amongst others,” Dhillon said Monday on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
“So there’s a lot of hemming and hawing, including from red states, a lot of back-and-forth, and then some outright refusal to cooperate from many states; and so I am proud to report that today I’m in litigation with twenty-two states in the United States; that’s actually twenty-three lawsuits, since California has two lawsuits,” she continued. “I also have voluntary compliance from thirteen states, including Texas and several others. And even on Christmas Eve, I had secretaries of state uploading their data to the DOJ so that we could do our work on it and help them clean their voter rolls.”