President Donald Trump’s administration had another setback this week in its attempt to get unredacted voter registration data from Wisconsin.
After losing in federal district court last month, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to expedite its lawsuit in order to audit Wisconsin’s voter registration list ahead of the August primary and November general election — demanding sensitive voter data like drivers license information and partial Social Security numbers.
The DOJ’s emergency motion suggested “many” absentee ballots could be sent to “non-citizens” or otherwise “fraudulent” registrants without a federal audit.
The appeals court denied the request on Wednesday.
The DOJ has filed 30 other voter roll lawsuits against states and the District of Columbia, according to an analysis by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. Of those, nine have been dismissed by federal district court judges.
Trump has repeatedly made false claims about widespread election fraud with absentee voting by mail. The attempt to force states like Wisconsin to produce unredacted voter data coincides with a proposed U.S. Postal Service rule that wouldn’t allow ballots to be mailed unless the voter sending it is on a federally approved list. The rule proposal was blocked by a federal judge on Thursday.
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Court filings from the Wisconsin Elections Commission say it provided the DOJ with publicly accessible voter roll data.
But the administration argues the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act require Wisconsin to give its voters’ driver license numbers and the last four digits of social security numbers too.
A brief filed by the Elections Commission pushes back on the DOJ’s argument.
It claims Congress never gave the Justice Department power to regulate state voter rolls under those laws. The commission also argues that Wisconsin is exempt from portions of the Voter Registration Act because it has same-day registration, and that it’s too late for the DOJ to comb voter rolls to “ferret out everyone it thinks should not be voting, and somehow order Wisconsin to remove them” before the elections.
“Even if it were possible to achieve these steps in the time left, the notion that such a chaotic process would serve the interests of Wisconsin voters is absurd,” said the commission’s brief.
Derek Clinger is an attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative. He told WPR the appeals court still has to rule on the merits of the DOJ’s lawsuit.
But Clinger said the Elections Commission’s argument about timing is compelling and has been used by several other states. Clinger said it’s also clear Wisconsin’s same-day registration exempts it from federal voter list maintenance requirements under the National Voter Registration Act.
“So, it just raises this point that the rationale for why the federal government needs this data doesn’t really line up with what the federal law says,” Clinger said.
Clinger noted the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a similar case on Wednesday. It was the highest profile loss for the Trump administration’s attempt to get access to state voter data. Clinger said the 6th Circuit decision isn’t binding on the Wisconsin case, but the 7th Circuit appeals court judges will notice.
“It has a persuasive value,” said Clinger. “So, other courts like the 7th Circuit, will certainly review that decision from the 6th Circuit, and probably give it some weight, but it’s not bound to follow that,” said Clinger.
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