NEW YORK AP - The requests have come in letters, emails and phone calls. The specifics vary, but the target is consistent: The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up an effort to get voter data and other election information from the states.
Over the past three months, the department's voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission.
In Colorado, the department demanded "all records" relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election.
Department lawyers have contacted officials in at least seven states to propose a meeting about forging an information-sharing agreement related to instances of voting or election fraud. The idea, they say in the emails, is for states to help the department enforce the law.
The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government.