Texas officials have turned over the state’s voter roll to the U.S. Justice Department, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, complying with the Trump administration’s demands for access to data on millions of voters across the country.

The Justice Department last fall began asking all 50 states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant identifying information on every registered voter in each state — and other election-related data. The Justice Department has said the effort is central to its mission of enforcing election law requiring states to regularly maintain voter lists by searching for and removing ineligible voters.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune that the state had sent its voter roll, which includes information on the approximately 18.4 million voters registered in Texas, to the Justice Department on Dec. 23.

  • jonathan7luke@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Yeah, I’m kinda confused here as well. You’ve been able to request voter records for years now, and they already include basically all the information the article is talking about: https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/pi.pdf. There are several websites that submit these requests and then publish the results online for free. My voting history (including name, address, age, etc.) has been up on these sites for years. I do not like that at all, but I have no control over it. I’m not really sure what is different about what was handed over from Texas to the federal government…

    • mrcleanup@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Washington State refused the request because the feds wanted socials, license numbers, signatures, birthdates, and other information protected by state law. They happily shared the general info like name and address, but the feds are trying to sue to get the protected parts too.

      • jonathan7luke@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        Ah, yep, that’s what it is. Thanks for the clarification. Found this in another article:

        The state included identifiable information about voters, including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, Pierce said.