Ruby red state refuses to cooperate with Trump Justice Department
Idaho’s top election official recently said he will not give the Trump administration access to sensitive personal information about 1 million Idaho registered voters.
In a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice last week, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane turned down the the Justice Department’s offer for a deal to share the information, which would include Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and birth dates.
The move to decline sharing Idaho’s full voter roll comes as the Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states for refusing its demands. In December, a Justice Department attorney hinted that the federal government could sue Idaho for not complying, public records that the Idaho Capital Sun obtained showed.
McGrane wrote in his letter that the Justice Department had recently revealed in a separate federal lawsuit filing that sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, were shared from federal systems “to unauthorized persons.”
“That development reinforces the importance of careful stewardship of sensitive voter information. While I appreciate the Department’s representation that Idaho’s data will be safeguarded, I cannot take that now-apparent risk in the absence of clear legal duty to do so. Ultimately, my concern is for the privacy rights of Idahoans who have registered to vote, as secured under Idaho law,” McGrane wrote to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section Acting Chief Eric Neff in a Feb. 26 letter.
The letter didn’t specify how that data was shared. But in January, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing that employees of the federal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, shared Social Security data on an unsecured thirty-party server, the New York Times reported.
A U.S. Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on McGrane’s letter.
In a statement, Idaho Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson Joe Parris said “Idaho law clearly protects the release of private voter information. We have full confidence in the integrity and accuracy of Idaho voter rolls through consistent voter information confirmation and will continue to ensure only American citizens are voting in the 2026 election.”
How we got here: Justice Department says it sought info for election security
McGrane’s office already gave the Justice Department a copy of Idaho’s publicly available voter registration list, which scrubs that sensitive personal information, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported.
In early January, McGrane told the Sun in an interview that his office was still in talks with the Justice Department over whether and how to share Idaho’s full data, which he portrayed as a complex legal issue.
The Justice Department has said it wants Idaho’s data to ensure election integrity. But as the Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement, some fear how the federal government will use the data. Trump has falsely claimed that droves of noncitizens vote, a crime which is actually rare nationally and in Idaho.
In September, the U.S. Justice Department asked Idaho — like it had asked other states — to turn over its full voter registration records with identifiable, sensitive information on registered voters.
Idaho Secretary of State tells Justice Department his office doesn’t have legal duty to turn over its full voter roll
McGrane, a Republican who’s running for re-election, also told the Justice Department that he doesn’t believe his office is required under “a clear legal duty” to share Idaho’s full voter roll with the federal government.“My responsibility as Idaho’s Secretary of State is to administer elections in accordance with state and federal law and to safeguard the sensitive information entrusted to this office by Idaho citizens,” McGrane wrote in the letter to Neff. “Idaho law strictly governs the disclosure of voter information. In the absence of a clear legal requirement that Idaho provide a copy of its complete, unredacted voter list, and in light of my responsibility to protect Idahoans’ personal information, my office will not provide the requested data.”
The Justice Department has sued 29 states for refusing to turn over their voter registration lists with sensitive information, according to the Brennan Center. But federal judges dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuits against Oregon, California and Michigan.
The three rulings dismissing lawsuits, McGrane wrote, concluded that neither the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act or the Civil Rights Act – three federal laws the Justice Department has cited in its demands — “authorize the Department to require a disclosure of a state’s full voter registration list on request. This indicates that the Department lacks a legal basis to demand personal information otherwise protected under Idaho law.”
“As a result, after further consultation with the Idaho Attorney General’s Office and additional review of Idaho law, I must inform you that Idaho will not provide additional personally identifiable information from its voter registration system, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, or driver’s license numbers,” McGrane wrote.
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