The U.S. Department of Justice has asked Minnesota election officials to provide the state’s voter registration list and other election data to show proof of compliance with federal election law.
The letter, sent June 25 to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, asks for a response within 30 days. The DOJ recently sent a similar letter to Pennsylvania, and made other data requests of elections officials in Arizona, Colorado and Wisconsin.
A spokeswoman for Simon’s office declined to comment beyond saying it has not yet responded to the DOJ’s request. The letter does not explicitly say why the federal government requested the data. The DOJ declined to comment.
In the letter, the DOJ asked state officials for information on more than a dozen different points, including how deceased voters and people who’ve left Minnesota are removed from rolls and how the state’s voting systems are made secure.
The letter is part of a shift for the agency’s election division away from its long-held role of protecting access to voting. Instead, officials are addressing concerns that have been raised by conservative activists for years, often based on false claims of voter fraud and other elections-related claims.
In March, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order meant to overhaul election operations nationwide. Critics have said the order could disenfranchise millions of voters. Two judges have since blocked most of that order.
The voting systems in Minnesota and in other states “have never been more secure and accurate than they are today,” said David Becker, who served as a lawyer in the DOJ’s elections division under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.
Minnesota election officials use best practices like paper ballots, after-election audits and a secure statewide voter registration database, Becker said.
