Dead Voter Rolls Claim Sparks New DOJ Fight

Adriana Stone 0 1 min read

Dead Voter Rolls Claim Sparks New DOJ Fight

The Justice Department is turning up the pressure on states and the District of Columbia over access to voter rolls. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the department has asked every state for its voter lists, and that about a third have already complied voluntarily or reached some kind of agreement.

For the rest, the department is taking a harder line. Dhillon said the DOJ is now suing 29 states and the District of Columbia after they refused to turn over the records the department says it is entitled to review under the Civil Rights Act of 1960. The push is part of a broader effort to check the accuracy of voter registration data and clean up outdated entries.

Dhillon said the early results are raising eyebrows. According to her, the department has already reviewed about 60 million records and found at least 350,000 dead people still listed on voter rolls in the jurisdictions it has examined. She also said roughly 25,000 people with no citizenship records were referred to Homeland Security. Those are the kinds of numbers that are likely to keep the debate over election integrity front and center.

On Sunday Morning Futures, Maria Bartiromo also pressed Dhillon on a different issue: the Russia collusion saga and why so few people have faced consequences. Dhillon said investigations take time, that witnesses have to be interviewed, and that the department does not want to rush into conclusions. She also suggested some judges have been blocking Trump administration cases in ways she described as lawfare.

Dhillon said the effort will continue no matter what happens in the next election cycle. Her message was simple: the work is not going away, and the department intends to see it through. She argued that if cleanup does not happen, public confidence in elections will suffer even more.

The broader fight now centers on a basic question: who gets to see the rolls, and what is hiding in them? Supporters of the DOJ effort say the public deserves clean lists and clear answers. Critics are likely to argue over privacy, federal authority, and the scope of the investigation. Either way, the issue is now squarely in the spotlight.

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