Justice Department Sues States for Voter Data Amid Rollout Maintenance Concerns

The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against more than 20 states seeking access to personal information from voter databases, following widespread refusals to surrender voter rolls. In its legal arguments, the department claims the federal government has an obligation to ensure voter roll accuracy, pointing to election survey data that suggests states like Michigan and California inadequately maintain their voter databases.

While the department’s cited numbers are factually accurate, they present an incomplete picture of state-level voter roll maintenance practices. The same data source reveals that Michigan actually ranks among the most active states in removing deceased voters from its rolls, while California demonstrates one of the highest overall voter removal rates nationwide.

The legal actions reference the 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey, a biennial analysis conducted by the federal Election Assistance Commission. According to this survey, states collectively removed more than 21 million voters from rolls between the 2022 and 2024 elections. Approximately 21 percent of these removals were due to voter deaths.

In Michigan, authorities removed over 350,000 voters (about 4.2 percent of registered voters), with nearly 199,000 of these removals—roughly 55 percent—attributed to deaths. California, meanwhile, removed more than 3.1 million voters (about 12.4 percent of its voter base), including approximately 378,300 deceased individuals, representing about 11.9 percent of California’s total removals.

Election administration experts caution that these statistics alone provide an insufficient basis for evaluating voter roll maintenance effectiveness or detecting potential fraud. States vary significantly in population size, data reporting methods, and approaches to maintaining voter lists.

“The fundamental problem is that election administration is decentralized, such that states are not equivalent,” explained Michael Morse, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who specializes in voter list maintenance research. He warned against interpreting a below-average removal rate as evidence of negligence or misconduct, or assuming there exists a universal standard for ensuring voter roll accuracy.

Complicating comparisons further is the variety of administrative procedures across states. Some jurisdictions classify in-state voter relocations as simple transfers, while others record them as cancellations followed by new registrations. States with automatic voter registration systems may more readily identify previously registered voters at former addresses. Demographic factors also play a significant role—some states have more transient populations, while others have older populations or higher mortality rates. California, notably, has one of the nation’s lowest mortality rates.

Timing further affects the data. Federal protections require states to notify voters of potential registration cancellations, often resulting in multi-year removal processes. Many states maintain “inactive” voter lists for registrations in the removal pipeline. Michigan, for example, has identified over 600,000 registrations scheduled for removal between 2025 and 2027, which aren’t reflected in current removal statistics.

Charles Stewart, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and election administration expert, notes that most specialists believe every state “does well enough to ensure that only legally eligible people vote and they only vote once.” While questioning how to improve roll accuracy remains legitimate, Stewart emphasized that the election survey data “is just not intended to guide scrutiny of maintenance.”

The ongoing legal battle highlights tensions between federal oversight and state control of election processes, as well as the complexities of maintaining accurate voter rolls in a decentralized system. As courts weigh these cases, the technical nuances of voter list maintenance practices will likely play a central role in determining the appropriate balance between federal access and state authority over voter information.