Trump administration sues Colorado secretary of state over voter data request
Election Judge Ashley Kidder works in the receiving room at the Denver Elections Division on Election Day in Denver on Nov. 4, 2025. RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Justice sued Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold over her refusal to hand over sensitive voter files.
This story was originally published by the Colorado Newsline.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Thursday over her refusal to hand over unredacted voter registration information.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado, demands that Griswold, a Democrat, provide the federal government a copy of its statewide voter registration list that includes people’s full names, dates of birth, address and either their driver’s license numbers, last four digits of their Social Security numbers or their unique identifiers provided under the Help America Vote Act.
“This proceeding arises from the Attorney General’s investigation into Colorado compliance with federal election law, particularly the (National Voting Rights Act) and HAVA,” the lawsuit says.
The U.S. attorney general is Pam Bondi.
The DOJ has now sued 18 states over the issue, including four on Thursday. Fifteen of those states voted for Kamala Harris, a Democrat, in the 2024 presidential election. The department has requested voter registration information from at least 40 states.
The DOJ first asked Colorado for voter registration records on May 12. In November, after federal officials acknowledged that the DOJ shared voter information with the Department of Homeland Security to search it for noncitizens as a way to “scrub aliens from voter rolls,” Griswold joined a group of other secretaries of state to ask Bondi and the department if it misled them about how voter information would be used.
On Dec. 1, officials once again asked the state for the records via email and proposed a memorandum of understanding that the DOJ believed “cures all potential concerns a state might rightfully raise regarding its citizens’ private data and identifying information,” according to an email cited in the lawsuit. Griswold responded that she would not send the voter files.
“We will not hand over Coloradans’ sensitive voting information to Donald Trump,” Griswold said in a statement. “He does not have a legal right to the information. I will continue to protect our elections and democracy, and look forward to winning this case.”
Besides asserting that the administration is not legally entitled to the information it seeks, Griswold and other election officials have expressed concern about the security of sensitive voter data if they release it to federal agencies, and they have questioned the administration’s motives.
“Is the administration collecting in an unprecedented way mass voter data and dumping it into an untested, unverified federal system to spread voter disinformation — disinformation to undermine our elections?” Griswold said last month.
Griswold has already given publicly available Colorado voter information to the DOJ.
The lawsuit requests the voter information within five days of a court order. It claims the DOJ has broad power to request the information through the Civil Rights Act from 1960.
Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.