Raffensperger rebuffs pressure campaign to hand over sensitive voter data to feds

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is refusing to turn over sensitive personal information from Georgia’s voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Justice in response to the Trump administration’s ongoing legal campaign aimed at forcing state and local officials to disclose voter roll information to the federal government. But pressure from some lawmakers and other […]

Lawmakers on the Senate Ethics Committee voted along party lines to advance a resolution urging the secretary of state to comply with a Department of Justice lawsuit Thursday. Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is refusing to turn over sensitive personal information from Georgia’s voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Justice in response to the Trump administration’s ongoing legal campaign aimed at forcing state and local officials to disclose voter roll information to the federal government.

But pressure from some lawmakers and other state officials for him to turn over the data is mounting, despite Raffensperger’s repeated claims that doing so would violate state law.

In December, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit arguing that Georgia’s unredacted voter registration list was needed as part of an ongoing investigation into “Georgia’s compliance with federal election law.” 

Raffensperger had previously sent Justice Department officials some of the state’s voter registration data, but he argued that state law prohibited his office from divulging the Social Security numbers, full dates of birth and driver’s license numbers of Georgia residents.

In a Wednesday court filing, attorneys for the secretary of state’s office filed a motion requesting that the lawsuit be dismissed, arguing that the Justice Department is exceeding its authority in requesting the records, that it lacks the jurisdiction to sue and that the Macon-based court in which the case was filed was the wrong venue.

“There is no basis to think that Georgia is not complying with those list maintenance requirements,” the state’s motion reads. 

The redacted records the state has sent over, the state’s filing continues, “show that Georgia conducts list maintenance to the fullest extent allowed by” federal law. 

“The (Department of Justice) does not need Georgia voter (personal identifying information) to ascertain that fact, which makes the lack of the required basis in the demand particularly telling,” the state’s attorneys wrote.

But at least some of Georgia’s state leaders are escalating their efforts to get Raffensperger to turn over the data. During a State Election Board meeting Wednesday, board members voted 3-1 to pass a resolution calling on the secretary of state to transmit the state’s unredacted voter rolls to the Department of Justice by the end of the week. On Thursday, lawmakers on the Senate Ethics Committee voted along party lines to advance a resolution urging the secretary of state to comply with the lawsuit. 

“The primary concern of mine is that we are not fully engaging to do this,” said Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican who introduced the resolution. “What we are doing is we are spending taxpayers’ resources to fight something that we have not sat down and fully vetted out with the Department of Justice.”

In an op-ed published last week by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Raffensperger defended his decision not to release the unredacted data and criticised the senators who cosponsored the resolution, saying they were “putting political ambition ahead of common sense and public service.”

“This resolution isn’t about election integrity or clean voter rolls,” Raffensperger wrote. “It’s an obvious attempt to shame, intimidate and smear the secretary of state’s office for doing exactly what the law requires.”

Ethics chair Sen. Sam Watson, a Moultrie Republican, invited Raffensperger to attend the committee hearing to discuss the resolution, but the secretary of state’s general counsel Charlene McGowan declined the invitation, citing an inability to comment on pending litigation.

“I am more than happy to update the committee when this matter is no longer in active litigation,” McGowan wrote. The secretary of state’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Democrats on the committee pushed back against the resolution, arguing that there were no legal grounds to turn over the data.

“We are, with this resolution, asking the secretary of state to violate Georgia law,” said Sen. Nan Orrock, an Atlanta Democrat.

Common Cause, a nonprofit government watchdog group, also cautioned states against turning over sensitive data, arguing that it would make Americans more vulnerable to hackers and foreign adversaries. Common Cause has filed a motion to intervene in the case.

“A national database containing your name, address, driver’s license or Social Security number and other personal information all stored on a federal server would be a gold mine for hackers inside and outside of the country,” said Dan Vicuña, who serves as a senior policy director at Common Cause.

DOJ is sharing state voter roll lists with Homeland Security

Georgia is among at least 44 states that have received requests from the Justice Department for their complete voter data, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is tracking the requests. It is also among the 24 states that the Brennan Center says are currently facing lawsuits for refusing to turn over all the requested data, which includes voters’ names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. In at least two of those states, the lawsuits have been dismissed by federal judges.

In September, the Trump administration confirmed that the Department of Justice is also sharing state voter roll information with the Department of Homeland Security in a search for noncitizens.

The Justice Department has also filed a lawsuit against Fulton County late last year for refusing to turn over voter records from the 2020 election.

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