The Elections Commission has rejected a U.S. Department of Justice request for Wisconsin voters’ personal data, saying it’s barred from sharing the information by state law.
In a letter responding to the U.S. DOJ’s request, commissioners yesterday wrote that Wisconsin law “explicitly prohibits the Commission” from providing the full unredacted voter registration list, which includes information like driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of residents’ Social Security numbers.
Instead, it indicated a willingness to share non-confidential voter information such as names, addresses and the elections in which they’ve participated.
Commissioner Don Millis, a GOP appointee, said the commission’s decision wasn’t a commentary on the DOJ’s intentions or whether the request was appropriate.
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“The DOJ is asking the Wisconsin Elections Commission to do something that state law does not allow us to do,” Millis said.
Chair Ann Jacobs, a Dem appointee, described the U.S. DOJ’s request as “not merely our voting rolls … but rather the personal information of Wisconsin voters.”
The commission voted 5-1 to approve a letter responding to the federal government’s request and to release the memorandum of understanding the U.S. DOJ had proposed. GOP Commissioner Bob Spindell was the sole holdout.
The proposed MOU is similar to one the federal agency sent to Colorado seeking voters’ full names, their dates of birth, their address, and their driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security number.
Colorado officials rejected the request, and the U.S. DOJ has filed suit against at least six states seeking the information as part of what it’s called an election integrity exercise to make sure ineligible voters aren’t on state rolls.
Spindell argued that state law and the federal Help America Vote Act gave the federal government permission to access state voter data and speculated the commission’s decision, along with other states’ refusal to release their voter rolls to the feds, would lead to the Supreme Court ruling on the issue.
He also criticized framing the commission’s decision as a matter of state law.
“The Elections Commission ourselves have the ability to say if we’re going to do it or not going to do it. It’s not set in stone,” Spindell said.
Mark Thomsen, a Democratic appointee, said Spindell’s argument relied on a single provision of state law and called his reasoning “flat-out wrong.”
“Wisconsin has never stood for the proposition that every government is allowed to have all this data,” Thomsen said.
The Commission’s letter rejected DOJ arguments that federal statutes, including Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, overrode Wisconsin law. It also informed the federal agency it would be able to obtain the list through Badger Voters, a website the commission maintains.
The fee to obtain the list through Badger Voters is $12,500.
The commission also highlighted 11 major voter list maintenance processes utilized in Wisconsin.
