Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, expressed confusion on Thursday over states’ refusal to hand over their voter registration lists to ensure compliance with federal law.
The U.S. Department of Justice has sued 29 states and Washington, D.C., for refusing to provide state voter rolls that include driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers.
Dhillon said: “You would think they’d want to show they’re in compliance with federal law, which requires clean voter rolls, but they’re giving different excuses. Some of them give no excuse at all. Others claim their state privacy laws protect the data from the federal government — though that doesn’t make sense when you consider Social Security numbers are issued by the federal government.”
She added: “They don’t like our purpose. They fear we’ll use this information to harass minorities or aliens, but regardless, we’re entitled to this data and will pursue each of these litigations to its bitter end.”
Dhillon noted that any instance of a deceased person remaining on voter rolls is sufficient for her investigation. A review of more than 50 million voter records revealed over 300,000 dead individuals and tens of thousands of potential noncitizens.
She said: “The left keeps moving the goalposts. First, they claimed this doesn’t happen or it’s extremely rare. But we found a significant number of discrepancies.”
Dhillon added: “If you had nothing to hide, then you wouldn’t hide it.”
