“The Department of Justice has the legal authority to enforce federal voting laws, and we’ll provide them with whatever resources they need to do their job and help us keep Ohio’s elections honest,” Kindel said in a statement to this outlet Friday. He added that the federal government is subject to data privacy laws.
In a Feb. 13 letter to the DOJ confirming the immediate delivery of the state’s voter registration data, LaRose said the federal agency had twice requested the files in August 2025 “for the purpose of enforcing” the National Voter Registration Act and assessing whether or not Ohio was complying with the federal law’s statewide voter registration maintenance provisions.
The DOJ had argued that federal law mandated states like Ohio to share such data, and, after meeting with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, LaRose said he was “satisfied that the Department has a lawful interest in reviewing our compliance with federal law.”
In his letter, LaRose said it was his understanding that “the Department of Justice will use the records only for legitimate governmental purposes and will not disclose any of the provided records to any entity except as authorized to do so (under federal law.)”
Other states push back
In many other states, this request from the DOJ has led to legal battles. The DOJ in late February announced it had open lawsuits against 29 states — red and blue alike — that refused to turn their voter registration databases over to the federal government.
“The Justice Department will continue to fulfill its oversight role dutifully, neutrally, and transparently wherever Americans vote in federal elections,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Many state election officials, however, are choosing to fight us in court rather than show their work. We will not be deterred, regardless of party affiliation, from carrying out critical election integrity legal duties.”
States that have gone to the mat with the DOJ over the issue have found courtroom success. A federal judge in California’s case concluded that the DOJ’s ask was “unprecedented and illegal.” In the separate cases of Michigan and Oregon, the DOJ’s lawsuit was dismissed in federal court.
LaRose’s decision to comply with the DOJ’s ask has raised concerns from some and drawn scorn from others, including U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Cleveland.
“While most states across the country are rejecting the Trump DOJ’s outrageous voter roll demands, Ohio voluntarily handed over sensitive voter data with no transparency and no real safeguards,” Brown said. “What’s worse, multiple courts have already ruled that the Trump DOJ has no right to ask for or to obtain this information.”
Brown expressed cynicism over the federal government’s quest for state’s voter rolls, framing it as an attempt by Trump to undermine future elections.
‘No business asking for it’
Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters, expressed a similar concern in a Friday interview with this outlet: “We don’t know why the federal government wants this data. All we know is that they have no business asking for it or having it.”
Kathleen Clyde, chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, said in a statement Monday that the party was looking for opportunities to counter what she called an “egregious abuse of power.”
“Once again Frank LaRose put his political ambition ahead of what’s best for Ohioans by willfully handing over the private voter registration data of roughly eight million Ohioans to the Trump Administration despite the fact that even his Republican counterparts are declining to do so,” Clyde said.
Kindel, meanwhile, argued that opposition to LaRose’s decision was politically motivated, and suggested that sharing voter records with the federal government wasn’t much different than the intra-state coordination between the secretary of state’s office and the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
“It is common practice for state and local governments to use federal databases in protecting the integrity of everything from government benefit programs to law enforcement,“ Kindel said. ”Additionally, most of Ohio’s voter registration data is already publicly available, and we’re required by law to check it against other government records to make sure it’s accurate and up to date. We’ve done this for years with the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles and now with the Department of Homeland Security.”
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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