The U.S. Justice Department has added Connecticut to the list of states it is suing for failing to produce detailed information on registered voters that the department says it needs to enforce federal clean election laws.
The federal suit seeks to force the state to produce a digital copy of Connecticut’s statewide voter registration list, including each voter’s full name, date of birth, address and identification that must include either their state driver’s license number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or another kind of “unique identifier” required under federal election law.
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the department’s Civil Rights Division, which filed the suit. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, the state’s chief election officer, is the target of the suit for her resistance to Trump administration efforts to obtain detailed voter information, saying she is concerned personal information could be misused.
“As Secretary of the State, my foremost responsibility is to the voters of Connecticut who entrust the state and their local election officials with sensitive data so they can participate in our
representative democracy without fear that their information will be misused or exposed,” she said.
“As Connecticut knows, our office takes election integrity seriously, and we follow the law while making sure our elections remain accessible, secure, and transparent. That balance is essential to maintaining public trust, and it’s something I will continue to protect.”
Connecticut is one of 23 states being sued for failing to produce detailed personal identifying information on voters.
The Trump Justice Department has said the suits are part of its effort to make sure that only qualified citizens vote. By failing to comply with data requests, it claims the states are violating U.S. law requiring biennial review of federal election security.
Thomas and election officers from other states have expressed concern that they could violate privacy laws by disclosing the personal identifiers demanded by the Justice Department.
“Although the Secretary remains prepared to cooperate with the federal government to ensure that our elections are conducted in a manner consistent with federal law — as she has consistently done in the past — the Secretary cannot simply turn over voter information unless permitted to do so by law,” a Thomas aide wrote to justice lawyers in an exchange of correspondence last year.
Compliance with Trump administration demands on voter identification has become a political issue, with State Attorney General William Tong supporting Thomas and complaining that, “Rather than communicating productively with us, they rushed to sue.”
Legislative Republicans shot back that Thomas and Tong ought to be more concerned with election integrity particularly in view of repeated irregularities in Bridgeport.
“If a Democratic administration had made this request, the data would have been on a FedEx truck within the hour,” Republican state Representatives Vincent Candelora and Gail Mastrofrancesco said in a joint statement. “Secretary Thomas and Attorney General Tong slice and dice voter data for their own campaigns, so their attempt to position themselves as protectors of ‘sensitive’ information is laughable. They should comply with this request, not obstruct it. Otherwise, residents will rightly wonder what their party has to hide.”
Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said, also in a joint statement, “Once again, the Trump administration is using threats and coercion to try to collect Connecticut voters’ private data that it has no legal basis for requesting, and which we can only surmise has no beneficial motive for using.
“Connecticut is one of nearly 20 Democratic states that Trump’s Justice Department is now bullying in order to create a national citizen database. Connecticut will fight for our citizens’ right to privacy, and we will not surrender to the countless election deniers and conspiracy theorists who inhabit the Trump administration.”