SPRINGFIELD — Federal officials are continuing to press their demand for Illinois’ unredacted voter registration database, which includes sensitive personal information, and are now giving state officials until Monday, Sept. 1, to comply.
In an email Thursday, Aug. 21, Michael E. Gates, an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, rejected the Illinois State Board of Elections’ request for additional time to research the legal issues involved in the demand to determine what data it can lawfully turn over.
“The electronic form of Illinois’s Voter Registration List already exists and can be easily transmitted to the Justice Department by following the instructions in our (July 28) letter,” Gates wrote. “The legal authorities presented by the Justice Deprtment’s (sic) for the transmittal of the VRL are clear. Having said this, we will extend the time to respond for Illinois to September 1st.”
The Justice Department has said it wants the state’s complete voter registration database – including “all fields contained within the list” – so it can determine whether the state is complying with provisions of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.
That law requires states to keep those lists accurate and up to date. That includes occasionally purging the list of registrations of people who have died or moved.
In addition to the database, DOJ also asked the state in its July 28 letter to identify the number of people purged from the rolls due to being noncitizens, adjudicated as incompetent or having felony convictions. And the agency asked for a list of all state and local election officials who have been responsible for carrying out list maintenance functions since the November 2022 elections.
The elections board responded to that request on Aug. 11 by providing most of the information DOJ sought, including a copy of the same voter registration database that state law allows it to release to political committees and other government agencies.
That list includes voters’ names, addresses, voting history and the date when they registered to vote. It does not include other sensitive personal information contained in voters’ records such as their dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
The board cited both federal and state laws for redacting that sensitive information including the federal Privacy Act, the Illinois Identity Protection Act and the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act.
But DOJ wrote on Aug. 14 the state’s response was insufficient and insisted on access to the entire, unredacted database, “including the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number as required under the Help America Vote Act (“HAVA”) to register individuals for federal elections.”
HAVA is a 2002 federal law that was enacted in the wake of the contested 2000 presidential election. Among other things, it sets minimum standards for states to follow in several areas of election administration, including voting equipment and maintaining statewide voter registration databases.
DOJ has not said why that information is necessary for it to investigate the state’s compliance with requirements for maintaining up-to-date voter registration rolls.
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