Bill by Minnesota’s congressional Republicans would halt federal election funds for the state

A bill introduced Monday by Rep. Pete Stauber and the rest of Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegates seeks to withhold federal election funding until the state turns over more detailed information about voters to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ sued Minnesota in September to try to force Secretary of State Steve Simon to give feds access to Minnesota’s voter registration list. Simon says the state has already provided “extensive details” on the state’s election security measures and the publicly available version of all requested data but the DOJ wants additional personal voter information.

RELATED: DOJ sues Minnesota Secretary of State Simon over refusal to turn over voter rolls

Federal officials have demanded full voter registration lists from nearly every U.S. state. A total of 32 have declined to share that data, and Minnesota is one of two dozen currently challenging that demand in court. Judges have already dismissed the DOJ’s case against both California and Oregon.

Stauber’s bill, titled the “Minnesota Voter Integrity Act of 2026,” singles out just the state he represents and seeks to prevent Minnesota from receiving federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds — money Minnesota uses to support townships, cities, and counties that administer elections, and protect against security breaches — until Simon complies with the DOJ’s demand.

Stauber claims that withholding that information means the DOJ can’t verify election integrity. Notably, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and several other federal staffers spent years trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election for President Donald Trump.

RELATED: DOJ demands records on Minnesota voters who verified address through ‘vouching’ system

Last month, Dhillon also demanded that Simon turn over all records related to Minnesota’s vouching system, saying it “seems facially inconsistent with the Help America Vote Act of 2002.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a letter to Gov. Tim Walz last month, also again demanded access to Minnesota’s voter rolls as one of the ways to end the surge of federal immigration officers in the state.

RELATED: Bondi letter to Walz requests access to Minnesota voting and welfare records, repeal of ‘sanctuary’ policies

Simon called the introduction of the bill “an irresponsible stunt,” adding that it would “damage the security of our elections by threatening to starve Minnesota of critical federal funds that help protect our election infrastructure from harm or attack.”

The secretary added that none of the other states that have declined to share the sensitive voter data with the DOJ have been targeted by their representatives in the way Stauber is targeting Minnesota.

Reps. Tom Emmer, Michelle Fischbach and Brad Finstad, Minnesota’s other three Republican congressional representatives, supported Stauber’s bill, which may face an uphill battle.
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