Trump’s Demand for State Voter Lists Has Hit a Wall – For Now
It is hard to keep track of the various ways in which the Trump Administration is attempting to inject itself into the election process. There has been an executive order designed to create a national voter list for mail ballots and one requiring proof of citizenship to vote. All these efforts seem a frenetic and somewhat desperate attempt to stave off an embarrassing mid-term election in November. Here I focus on only one of these efforts.
In March 2025, President Trump issued EO 14248, Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections. Pursuant to that order, the DOJ demanded that states turn over sensitive voter information from their voter files. This has met with resistance from many states, including West Virginia. So far, the resistance has succeeded.
Under the Constitution’s Election Clause, states regulate the “times, places and manner” of holding elections for Senators and Representatives. The “manner” of holding elections includes things like notices, registration, supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corruption, counting of votes, and publicizing election results. But Congress at any time can make or alter state voting laws and regulations.
Exercising this power, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. This law requires states to create a “single, uniform, official, centralized, computerized statewide voter registration list” that contains the name and registration information of every legally registered voter. HAVA requires individuals to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.
In July 2025, DOJ began demanding that nearly every state turn over its statewide voter list with unredacted personal information. DOJ claimed this was necessary to determine compliance with list maintenance requirements and to ensure there were no civil rights violations. West Virginia received a demand on September 8, 2025, for the full name, date of birth, residential address, driver’s license number, or last four SSN digits of all voters on its statewide list.
Secretary of State Kris Warner declined to comply, stating that none of the statutes relied upon by DOJ require compliance with such a broad request. What’s more, West Virginia law protects from disclosure sensitive personally identifiable information about its voters. He declared:
West Virginians entrust me with their sensitive personal information. Turning it over to the federal government, which is contrary to state law, will simply not happen.
As a compromise, Warner offered to turn over publicly available voter information. But in February 2026, DOJ sued West Virginia for compliance with the demand.
The West Virginia litigation hasn’t been resolved yet, but similar cases in ten other states have been – all losses for the Trump position. The most significant of these is United States v. Benson, decided on June 24, 2026, by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. This court is at the level immediately below the Supreme Court, and covers the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.
The point decided in this case was whether the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires the production of the voting list. This argument is also being made by DOJ in West Virginia. The CRA requires election officials to retain all “records” and papers which come into their possession relating to any application, registration or other act required by the state for voting, and to produce them upon demand by the government.
The court ruled that the Michigan voter file was not a “record coming into the possession” of state election officials. Instead, the list was created by those officials. In addition, the CRA tells election officials to retain an election record without alteration for 22 months, but other federal statutes require constant maintenance changes to the voter list. So the voter list could not be a “record” within the contemplation of the CRA.
Although the Benson case is only binding on courts in the Sixth Circuit, it is strong authority elsewhere. Recently, a federal district court in Pennsylvania adopted its reasoning, but went further to question the Trump Administration’s alleged civil rights enforcement motives. The court observed:
Public statements from government officials reveal its intentions: to create a nationwide voter-database, for potential weaponization in future elections; as a “fishing expedition,” hoped to advance unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting; and as a tool for immigration enforcement.
It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will take up these issues on an emergency basis before the mid-term elections in November. There is no emergency.
Ultimately, a compliant Supreme Court might agree with the Trump Administration and find that states must turn over voter lists despite state laws. It is also possible that the SAVE Act pending in Congress will specifically override state law and require the production of state voter lists, including sensitive personal identifiers. But for the moment, West Virginia Secretary of State Warner and other like-minded state officials around the country have the upper hand, and our voter information is safe.
