Inside the Justice Department case against New York over voter rolls

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) — The U.S. Justice Department sued New York State on Thursday, accusing officials of violating federal election law by withholding a complete statewide voter registration list, including private identifying information. DOJ filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, asking the court to order the state to release the records.

The federal government argued that the requested information is crucial for Attorney General Pam Bondi to fulfill her duty of enforcing election integrity. They want the court to declare that federal law overrides any state law blocking the release of these private records and a court order compelling complianc.

To prevent false positives and determine whether the state is properly maintaining their list, the DOJ claims they needs the unique identifiers. They’re looking for “duplicitous registrations, deceased and noncitizen voters, and voters who have moved.” The department said it can’t assess New York’s compliance without access to the complete list.

According to the lawsuit, the federal mandate stems from DOJ enforcement of three laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act. These laws are designed to ensure “accurate and current voter registration rolls for elections for Federal office” and protect against “fraud, errors, or suspicion” in elections, per the lawsuit.

The CRA requires election officials to keep certain records for 22 months after an election and give those records to the Attorney General upon written demand. And the NVRA requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls and make all related records available for inspection. It’s supposed to make states like New York remove ineligible voters from the rolls because of death or a change in residence.

HAVA, meanwhile, requires the state to implement a single, “centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list” and perform regular maintenance. HAVA also requires a unique identifier for each registered voter, either the voter’s driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number.

DOJ acknowledged in the lawsuit that the state did share a partial list that left out the identifiers. And the information on the incomplete list furnished to the feds in August is already publicly available, according to the complaint, and is also insufficient.

The DOJ complaint addressed exemptions claimed by officials as reasons for not handing over the information, including state election laws, public disclosure laws, and federal privacy laws. Such laws cited are “inapplicable to this statutorily authorized request from federal law enforcement,” they said.

Specifically, DOJ argued that:

• The last four digits of an SSN aren’t the full number, so turning those digits over wouldn’t violate the federal Privacy Act of 1974.
• A government agency carrying out official enforcement gets an exemption to the Driver’s License Protection Act that keeps motor vehicle records confidential.

The lawsuit named the State Board of Elections of the State of New York as a defendant, alongside Co-Executive Directors Kristen Zebrowski Stavisky and Raymond Riley III, and Commissioners Peter Kosinski, Henry Berger, Anthony Casale, and Essma Bagnuola. Take a look: