DOJ demands Illinois voter personal information by Sept. 1
[August 26, 2025]
By Peter Hancock
SPRINGFIELD — Federal officials are continuing to press their demand for
Illinois’ unredacted voter registration database, which includes
sensitive personal information, and are now giving state officials until
Monday, Sept. 1, to comply.
In an email Thursday, Aug. 21, Michael E. Gates, an attorney in the
Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, rejected the
Illinois State Board of Elections’ request for additional time to
research the legal issues involved in the demand to determine what data
it can lawfully turn over.
“The electronic form of Illinois’s Voter Registration List already
exists and can be easily transmitted to the Justice Department by
following the instructions in our (July 28) letter,” Gates wrote. “The
legal authorities presented by the Justice Deprtment’s (sic) for the
transmittal of the VRL are clear. Having said this, we will extend the
time to respond for Illinois to September 1st.”
The Justice Department has said it wants the state’s complete voter
registration database – including “all fields contained within the list”
– so it can determine whether the state is complying with provisions of
the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.
That law requires states to keep those lists accurate and up to date.
That includes occasionally purging the list of registrations of people
who have died or moved.
In addition to the database, DOJ also asked the state in its July 28
letter to identify the number of people purged from the rolls due to
being noncitizens, adjudicated as incompetent or having felony
convictions. And the agency asked for a list of all state and local
election officials who have been responsible for carrying out list
maintenance functions since the November 2022 elections.
The elections board responded to that request on Aug. 11 by providing
most of the information DOJ sought, including a copy of the same voter
registration database that state law allows it to release to political
committees and other government agencies.
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Election workers check voters’ names against a registration list and
hand out ballots at a polling place in Springfield. (Capitol News
Illinois file photo by Peter Hancock)
That list includes voters’ names, addresses, voting history and the date
when they registered to vote. It does not include other sensitive
personal information contained in voters’ records such as their dates of
birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social
Security numbers.
The board cited both federal and state laws for redacting that sensitive
information including the federal Privacy Act, the Illinois Identity
Protection Act and the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act.
But DOJ wrote on Aug. 14 the state’s response was insufficient and
insisted on access to the entire, unredacted database, “including the
registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her
state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the
registrant’s social security number as required under the Help America
Vote Act (“HAVA”) to register individuals for federal elections.”
HAVA is a 2002 federal law that was enacted in the wake of the contested
2000 presidential election. Among other things, it sets minimum
standards for states to follow in several areas of election
administration, including voting equipment and maintaining statewide
voter registration databases.
DOJ has not said why that information is necessary for it to investigate
the state’s compliance with requirements for maintaining up-to-date
voter registration rolls.
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