The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is suing six states, including Pennsylvania, for failing to provide accurate voter registration rolls.
“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in announcing the lawsuit. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, added: “Clean voter rolls protect American citizens from voting fraud and abuse and restore their confidence that their states’ elections are conducted properly, with integrity, and in compliance with the law.”
The complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, names the commonwealth and Secretary of State Al Schmidt as defendants.
It cites a March 25 executive order from President Donald Trump that declared: “Free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion are fundamental to maintaining our constitutional Republic. The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.”
According to the DOJ, Pennsylvania failed to comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by neglecting to properly maintain its voter rolls.
The department said it sent Schmidt a letter in June requesting that the state verify whether nonresidents and deceased individuals remained registered. Schmidt responded, but his reply “did not explain whether non-citizens were identified and what steps were taken to remove those voters. The response also admitted that if the commonwealth could not verify the ID number provided as required by HAVA, the applicant would be registered to vote anyway,” the lawsuit states.
In a later communication, Schmidt wrote: “Nothing in the NVRA provides a process by which those who are deemed non-eligible on the basis of being a non-citizen are to be removed from the voter rolls.”
The DOJ countered: “While acknowledging that it is illegal for a non-citizen to misrepresent that he is a citizen on a voter registration application, the commonwealth does not appear to have any process in place to make any determination about whether there are non-citizens on the voter rolls.”
Schmidt offered to provide public voting records, but not the “unique identifiers” — such as driver’s license or Social Security numbers — that the attorney general requested.
“In his August 21, 2025, letter, Secretary Schmidt refused to provide the records requested by the United States,” the suit states. “Defendants’ refusal to provide the information demanded by the attorney general is a violation of the Civil Rights Act.”
Dhillon underscored the broader scope of the case in a post on X: “CA, MI, MN, NY, NH, and PA — @TheJusticeDept’s @CivilRights Division has got its eyes on you! American citizens deserve clean voter rolls and confidence in our elections, and certain states need to stop hiding the ball!”
Linda Kerns, a Philadelphia election lawyer, said the DOJ has a strong case. “Free and fair elections require clean voter rolls, and the United States has the right to obtain the data to assess whether states are complying with the law. Secretary Al Schmidt should have complied with the original request from the Department of Justice. Now he will have to explain why he refused to a federal judge. And we taxpayers will have to pay lawyers to defend his noncompliance.”
Schmidt, however, vowed to resist.
“The Justice Department’s demand for voters’ personal information, including driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers, is unprecedented and unlawful, and we will vigorously fight the federal government’s overreach in court,” Schmidt said. “The Department of State will aggressively defend the privacy of Pennsylvania voters against this baseless lawsuit, and as secretary of the commonwealth, I have an obligation to protect the personal information that Pennsylvania voters entrust us with, and I take that obligation extremely seriously.”
Christian Adams, a former DOJ lawyer who now leads the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said Schmidt’s stance is unlikely to hold up. His group won a 2024 lawsuit against Maine in which a federal court ruled that state restrictions on access to voter rolls were preempted by federal law.
“It’s very simple,” Adams said. “The Voting Rights Act gives the attorney general the power to request election records, including the voter rolls.”