CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A dispute between West Virginia and the U.S. Department of Justice over disclosing voter information is a microcosm of a national battle between the DOJ and individual states during this year’s primary.
The DOJ is demanding states to hand over voters’ information such as birth dates, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers.
Newsweek reported in January 2026 that ten states had already provided the DOJ with complete voter lists, including driver’s licenses and partial SSNs — Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
West Virginia is one of 30 states that the DOJ has sued, as well as the District of Columbia, in federal court who have refused to hand over that information. The Justice Department claims that it needs voter information to check West Virginia’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.
Two citizen organizations, the West Virginia Citizen Action Group and the West Virginia Alliance for Retired Americans, each have submitted filings in federal district court to push back on positions taken by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Both groups claim the demand is a pretextual federal takeover of election administration that violates voter privacy and conflicts with existing state laws.
West Virginia Citizen Action Group Deputy Director Julie Archer said it was important for the organization to take action. She said the group wants to help not only its members, but also other voters in the state whose information may be unlawfully shared with the federal government in the case.
“As an organization that works to empower voters to have a voice in decisions affecting their futures, their families, and their communities, we’re just very concerned that this overreach by the Department of Justice can have a chilling effect, and make West Virginians more hesitant to engage in the political process out of fear about how their data might be misused,” Archer said.
Action has been taken by national organizations as well. Nonpartisan organization Common Cause joined ACLU to intervene in several of these lawsuits. Vice President of Policy Carol Evans called the DOJ’s suits “an illegal power grab.”
“The DOJ is trying to collect and consolidate voter data as part of a broad campaign to take over the election, and potentially to sow doubt in our election, and it implicates privacy,” Evans said. “Collecting this data with sensitive personal information puts hundreds of millions of Americans at risk — and no American should have to give up their privacy in order to vote.”
While Common Cause has not gotten involved in the West Virginia case specifically, Evans said concerned residents should reach out to Secretary of State Kris Warner and Attorney General J.B. McCuskey to encourage voter information to remain secure.
Six federal district courts have denied the DOJ’s request for unredacted voter information in California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Arizona.
The DOJ publicly began its quest for an unredacted voter file in Arizona last year. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes rebuked the Justice Department’s request, citing state privacy laws. The DOJ then filed a lawsuit against Arizona in January 2026.
The case was decided last month by Donald Trump-appointed judge Susan Brnovich in an Arizona court — the judge dismissed the DOJ’s request for state voter information.
Arizona Mirror journalist Jim Small said the DOJ’s arguments in court center around the Civil Rights Act of 1960. Small said the DOJ claims part of the act gives them authority to demand federal election records. Brnovich saw it differently, saying voter information was covered by other laws.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in the middle of the civil rights movement, Small said, when election officials across the country were actively destroying voter registration records in an attempt to keep black Americans from voting.
“The court in Arizona, as well as in Michigan, found that law applies to information voters give to states,” Small said. “It applies to the voter registration cards, it applies to their ballots, it applies to things like that, the documents that are given to election officials, not to documents that election officials create themselves. That ultimately is what these voter databases are.”
Small said the databases are required by federal law — the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act — to keep track of people who have died, moved, or are no longer eligible to vote.
Small noted that the DOJ’s pursuit of Arizona information was puzzling. He said the state has required residents to verify their U.S. citizenship during voter registration since 2004, while the DOJ seems to be going after voters it believes are not registered U.S. citizens.
Meanwhile, as other states, West Virginia’s Secretary of State has asked a federal judge to toss U.S. government demands for unredacted voter registration data. Litigation is ongoing between West Virginia and the DOJ in the case.
“We believe the Secretary is right to deny the Department of Justice access to an unredacted version of the file, and he is rightfully upholding the law,” Archer said.
Lawyers for Warner argue the U.S. Department of Justice request is legally deficient because it lacks a specific factual basis and pursues a pretextual purpose related to immigration enforcement rather than voting rights.
Moreover, attorneys for the state maintain that the voter lists are internally created databases exempt from federal production requirements and that disclosure would violate state and federal privacy laws.
Archer said the Department of Justice’s push for voter information data leans heavily on debunked conspiracies around the 2020 election, when Donald Trump publicly claimed that he had been shorted millions of votes.
“Now those baseless claims are being used as justification to break the law, and interfere with free and fair elections,” Archer said. “The federal government doesn’t have a valid basis or purpose for seizing West Virginia voters’ sensitive data.”
The West Virginia Secretary of State maintains that the U.S. Constitution preserves state control over election mechanics, protecting unredacted information from federal overreach.
Evans also said control of elections is detailed in the Constitution. She said President Donald Trump and the DOJ have no authority to get involved in federal elections — that is the role of individual states, operating with laws to protect sensitive voter data.
“What we are seeing here is the president is trying to nationalize voting, even though he has no role in running elections in our country,” Evans explained. “We [Common Cause] think that the Department of Justice is using this data and potentially running people’s information through databases created by other agencies for other purposes that are not reliable to determine voter eligibility.”
The DOJ could then decide who can and cannot vote, Evans said, and prevent eligible American voters from casting ballots. Evans expressed concern that collecting all this data into one database ignores privacy safeguards and would lead to cybersecurity risks.
A singular database could open the door for the DOJ to share the data with agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, Small said. He said the DOJ acknowledged in a Rhode Island voter registration case — after months of denying it — that Homeland Security might utilize that database to review voter information and hunt down who it believes to be illegal, non-citizen voters.
“[Homeland Security] could use that voter database to go out and ostensibly go police the elections, go arrest people, and potentially deport them,” Small said.
Archer raised similar concerns about how the data will be used, not just by the DOJ, but who they might share the information with.
“I think there is documentation to show that they don’t have, with some of the other states who have shared their data with the department, they don’t have good processes in place to properly protect and secure that data,” Archer said.
The Justice Department has yet to win one of these lawsuits in court. Despite differential in facts on a state-by-state basis, Small said each judge has decided that the DOJ doesn’t have the authority to get the voter files. He added that states who have won their lawsuits with the DOJ have provided a framework for other states to use in their defenses, which will only make it tougher on the Justice Department’s pursuit.
“The issue that I’m most curious about at this point is whether the DOJ appeals these things forward and tries to get them overturned in appellate courts or even tries to take this issue up to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Small said. “If that happens, then what the fallout would be, or what the new strategy would be from DOJ, if they decide that there isn’t going to be a legal path forward.”
Archer said she believes the government remains important in elections but cannot overstep its bounds.
“The federal government does have a role to play in protecting voters and expanding ballot access,” Archer said. “What we’re seeing in this case is an aggressive demand for data for unknown purposes. Part of what it boils down to is sowing mistrust in the process. West Virginia is part of 30 states who have been sued as part of this investigation. Ultimately, it’s about maintaining power and trying to silence the voices of people who do not support the president, and that should be very concerning to everyone.”
MetroNews’ Brad McElhinny contributed to this story.