December 03, 2025 12:12 PM UTC

Still Crickets: DOJ and DHS Ignore Request for Details About Voter Data Grab

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last month we took note of a request from 10 Secretaries of State across the country asking the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to provide more details about why they were insisting that states turn over voter registration data.

As The Associated Press reported at the time:

In response to a request for comment, the Justice Department shared a previous statement from Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “Clean voter rolls and basic election safeguards are requisites for free, fair, and transparent elections,” she stated. “The DOJ Civil Rights Division has a statutory mandate to enforce our federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the voting public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

It’s been two weeks since the 10 Secretaries of State — including Colorado’s Jena Griswold — sent that letter to the two federal law enforcement agencies.

That request for more information is apparently just going to be ignored by Trump administration officials such as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

According to a press release from Griswold’s office:

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not reply to a letter from 10 Secretaries of State seeking information on their collection and use of state voter roll data and whether they misled state officials. The letter, dated November 18, 2025, provided a December 1 deadline for response.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has issued the following statement:

“The Trump Administration’s requests for voter data are unprecedented. Americans deserve to know that when they register to vote, the Trump administration will not misuse their information. As Secretary of State, I will always fight for Colorado’s voters and will continue to seek transparency from the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Trump Administration.”

The Department of Justice requested extensive voter data from various states earlier this year. Many states received requests for unredacted voter data, including sensitive voter information. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security has provided inconsistent information to Secretaries regarding whether it had received voter data from the Department of Justice, and whether or how it would use that data.

The letter from Secretaries of State asked, in part:

♦ Whether the DOJ has shared or intends to share information from voter files with DHS or other federal agencies and, if so, why that was not communicated to impacted Secretaries of State.
♦ Whether any potential transfer of the data followed required data transfer protocol.
♦ Whether DHS continues to assert that they do not have and would not use voter data.

You can read the original letter HERE.

If the DOJ and DHS can’t even bother to come up with responses to very fair questions about why they want access to state voter data, it’s absolutely fair for everyone else to assume that these federal agencies don’t want said information for any good reasons. It also gives state and local elected officials plenty of reason to refuse to comply with these demands.

Federal agencies refusing to answer reasonable questions from elected Secretaries of State is not great. But under the Trump administration, it’s important to understand that not answering is an answer in itself.