DOJ Tells 30 States to Preserve 2024 Voter Records Under Threat of Criminal Sanctions After Losing Every Lawsuit So Far

Since the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division began suing states for unredacted voter registration files, it has lost every single case. The record is 0-23, including one loss on appeal, according to Democracy Docket. This week the department escalated anyway, sending letters to election officials in all 30 states it is currently suing, ordering them to preserve every hard copy and electronic record from the 2024 election or risk "civil and criminal sanctions."

The letters, confirmed by DOJ spokeswoman Kiersten Pels to The New York Times, tell officials they are "currently under investigation" for allegedly failing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. They don't cite a specific criminal statute or describe any concrete allegation of wrongdoing. No charges have been filed against any official, and no court has found any state out of compliance.

Utah Republican Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson said she had no idea her state was under investigation until she read the letter. "Um, no, I was not aware, but I guess I am now," she wrote on social media Wednesday, adding that DOJ should "focus on actual problems instead of baselessly harassing election officials." Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, got a similar letter dated the prior Friday and called it "a pretty direct threat," telling The Nevada Independent, "They're just using this as an opportunity to intimidate us, and I'm not going to fold in any way."

Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon pushed back on that framing directly. "We sent the letter to ensure these states do not destroy election records related to our ongoing lawsuits," she wrote Thursday. "This is standard litigation practice, not a 'threat.' We appreciate all states that cooperated with our data requests!" Preserving records during active litigation, known as a litigation hold, is in fact a routine legal obligation in many federal cases, not something DOJ invented. The dispute is over whether the underlying lawsuits, and the investigation claims attached to them, have any legal basis given the department's court record so far.

That record got worse this week on a separate front. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the administration's bid to revive an expanded version of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database for use in voter list maintenance, according to Democracy Forward, which represented the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center in the case. The appeals court found the government had not shown the modified system could lawfully operate, after a district court concluded it improperly disclosed Americans' Social Security data and, in Texas, led to citizens being asked to prove citizenship or lose their registration.

A third fight is also moving toward the Supreme Court. A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked a Trump administration rule affecting mail-ballot handling, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals refused this week to pause that injunction while the case proceeds, according to Newsweek. The appellate panel found the government hadn't shown it would likely win and agreed states may not be able to comply with the rule's requirements before November 3.

Thirty-eight current and former election officials, including Republican Secretaries of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, Scott Schwab of Kansas, Michael Adams of Kentucky and Monae Johnson of South Dakota, filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to let the rule take effect before the midterms. They stressed they weren't taking a position on the rule itself, only on timing, warning that new envelope requirements, an unfamiliar federal ballot portal, and a September 19 deadline to mail ballots to military and overseas voters leave no room for a late change. Raffensperger's spokesman Robert Sinners told Newsweek, "Election administrators deserve a clear roadmap to successfully deliver a free, fair, and fast election. We already have that in Georgia."

The administration's underlying argument, that stronger verification and data access protect election integrity against noncitizen voting, has not been evaluated on the merits in any of the 23 lost cases. Courts have so far ruled on procedural and statutory grounds, including that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 does not authorize DOJ to obtain unredacted state voter files this way. That leaves the core fraud claims neither proven nor disproven in court, an open question the litigation itself hasn't resolved.

The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the administration's emergency appeal over the mail-ballot rule. Until it does, or until DOJ's data lawsuits produce a different outcome on appeal, the preservation letters mean 30 states are now legally bound to hold onto 2024 election records indefinitely, well past the 22-month retention window that expired under the Civil Rights Act last week.