Trump’s DOJ Is Building a National Voter Roll That Could Upend the 2026 Midterms

The administration has been seeking access to sensitive voter data under the guise of protecting election integrity.

(Photo by Envato)

Remember when secretaries of state were the least visible, least interesting statewide elected officials? Remember when they weren’t getting national press coverage and were merely background players quietly running elections and helping as many people as possible cast their votes? Respectfully, that is how the job is supposed to be.

The first secretary of state I ever recognized was a little more than 10 years ago and that was only because I was working for a gubernatorial candidate who was at the top of the ticket that election cycle. For Geriatric Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers, the first secretary of state who may come to mind is likely Katherine Harris of Florida, who certified the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential election results in her state after the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the vote recount. Gen Z may point to the secretaries of state in battleground states who fought against Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of a stolen election in 2020. Now, Gen Alpha is primed to recognize the secretaries of state who are refusing to send Trump and his Department of Justice restricted voter information, including sensitive data like dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, as the administration attempts to compile a national voter roll and database.

According to reports, Trump’s DOJ has requested the data from 43 states and Washington, D.C., “to enforce federal election laws and protect the integrity of federal elections.” Note all of the buzzwords that have emerged from the right since Trump’s 2020 claims. According to the New York Times, the administration plans to compare voter data to a database maintained by Homeland Security. Additionally, the DOJ has offered states a Memorandum of Understanding that would allow federal officials to access and review the data, and flag voters as ineligible, after which states would have 45 days to automatically remove those voters from state voter rolls.

The most glaring red flag in this memo is that the Department of Justice does not outline any criteria for identifying an alleged ineligible voter. That broad language leaves the door open to any number of nefarious disenfranchisement possibilities based on location, race, gender identity or anything the DOJ decides is suspicious. Imagine receiving a notice from your secretary of state just before the midterm election informing you that you were flagged as an “ineligible voter” by the DOJ and thus removed from the voter roll. Or worse, imagine walking into your polling place on Election Day to vote and being denied a ballot and turned away because you’re not on the voter roll. If this scenario played out for even tens of thousands of voters out of the hundreds of millions whose information is being demanded by the federal government, that could impact the midterm elections when control of the U.S. House of Representatives is up for grabs and vital state and local legislative and judicial races are on the ballot.

Thankfully, dozens of secretaries of state are rejecting Trump’s demands for voter data. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said, “The DOJ can take a hike…Colorado will not help Donald Trump undermine our elections and hurt the American people.” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said, “They’re going to have to put me in jail if they want this information.” Secretaries of state from 10 states also demanded answers from the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security about how they intend to use the data, whether they have misled state officials and whether the states would violate privacy laws by sharing data with DHS. In response to states that have refused to hand over restricted voter information, the Trump administration has sued 23 states and Washington, D.C. to date.

The stakes of these court battles are immense, as states have, up to now, retained exclusive authority to administer elections under the U.S. Constitution. But if they are forced to hand over restricted voter data to the federal government, the Trump administration would have unprecedented power and potential to interfere in elections across the nation—not just in 2026, but in 2028 and beyond.

So far, eight states have turned over or said they would turn over unrestricted voter data, including Texas, which recently submitted information on 18.4 million voters to the DOJ. It should be noted that all eight states are Republican-led. Eleven states have reportedly expressed interest in complying with the proposed memo that would allow the removal of alleged “ineligible voters” from voter rolls. In response to those states’ documented willingness, the Democratic National Committee sent letters to state leaders in Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, highlighting potential violations of the National Voter Registration Act and the Quiet Period Provision. Not to mention, each of these states voted for Trump in 2024 by margins of 14 to 30 points.

Donald Trump has been overt in his efforts to control the 2026 midterms, from his order to Texas Republicans to draw a new Congressional map to help Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, to flouting “Trump 2028” merchandise in the Oval Office. His intentions are clear, and it doesn’t help that he has stacked his administration with supporters who continue to believe his unfounded claims about stolen elections and are willing to do his bidding. But what stands between the people and Trump getting his way are secretaries of state who are ready to fight—and hopefully the courts, but that’s an entirely different story.