发布于 2026 年 2 月 16 日，美国东部时间上午 5:30 / 来源：CNN
作者：[Tierney Sneed]
1 小时 30 分钟前
随着特朗普政府起诉了25位主要是民主党籍的州选举负责人，指控其选民名单存在问题，它也遭遇了来自共和党官员的更为低调但坚决的抵抗——这些官员对司法部索要保密选民登记信息的要求表示了反对。
根据采访、当地媒体报道以及CNN和研究选举问题的左翼智库布伦南中心（Brennan Center）获取的记录，至少有六个由共和党领导的州选举办公室拒绝了司法部获取非公开选民数据的请求，这些数据可能包含选民的社会保险号码、驾驶执照号码或当前住址。
“他们可以获取选民名单，他们要像其他人一样付钱购买，”西弗吉尼亚州国务卿克里斯·华纳（Kris Warner）上月告诉CNN，指的是他所在州售价500美元即可购买的公开名单。“他们不会得到我们的个人信息。”
其他几位共和党选举官员提供了敏感数据，但拒绝签署特朗普政府提出的协议——该协议要求他们移除司法部认定为不符合资格的选民。
在接受CNN采访时，共和党选举官员表达了对政府做法的担忧，尽管他们在选举安全的其他问题上与总统立场一致。他们表示，这些请求与禁止披露敏感选民信息的州法律相冲突。他们质疑政府索要这些数据的原因。并且，他们对由联邦政府而非州或地方官员负责从名单中移除不符合资格的选民这一想法感到不满。
司法部拒绝置评。
这场选民数据运动是特朗普政府试图更直接地介入各州选举相关事务的几种方式之一。
特朗普并未放弃其毫无根据的大规模选民欺诈执念。他呼吁共和党人将选举“国家化”，在行政部门安置2020年选举否认者，并领导对投票基础设施的审查，而联邦调查局（FBI）最近还从佐治亚州富尔顿县查获了2020年的选票。
选民在明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯的投票站填写选票，摄于2025年11月4日选举日。
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
共和党人对司法部选民数据项目的反对在12月中旬的一次会议上达到了顶点——当时共和党州选举官员与司法部首度负责民权事务的助理司法部长哈米特·迪隆（Harmeet Dhillon）会面，后者一直在推动获取数据的要求。司法部官员拒绝了对其选民信息计划进行调整的呼吁。
密西西比州国务卿迈克尔·沃森（Michael Watson）表示，最大的争议点之一是司法部提议的管理数据提供的协议中的一项要求——各州只有45天时间来修正政府指出的选民名单问题。沃森最终交出了数据，但拒绝签署该协议。
“我们坚决认为，维护选民名单应该由州一级负责，”同时担任美国州务卿协会（National Association of Secretaries of State）主席的沃森告诉CNN。
迪隆在公开言论中对州官员的担忧不屑一顾。
“我从国务卿那里得到的一些荒谬回应包括，‘哦，天哪，这是高度机密的社会保险信息，我们不可能把它交给联邦政府，’”迪隆最近在接受保守派记者约翰·所罗门（John Solomon）采访时表示。“这太愚蠢了，因为联邦政府当然会发放社会保险号码，人们每天去看医生或车管所时都会常规性地提供它……这非常荒谬。”
在2月2日所罗门的节目中，迪隆暗示在一到两周内将对拒不配合的州提起更多诉讼。自12月以来，尚未有新的选民名单相关案件被提起。
对司法部获取数据意图的质疑
选举官员指出州隐私法，解释他们为何不能交出选民的个人信息。
“如果我们在法律上能够遵守，我们会立即照做，”俄克拉荷马州选举委员会秘书保罗·齐里亚克斯（Paul Ziriax）本月在给司法部的一封信中表示（该信由俄克拉荷马新闻4台首先报道，并获得CNN的获取）。在迪隆提起的获取数据的诉讼中，一些法官已经驳回了司法部声称联邦法律优先于州隐私保护的论点。
密苏里州国务卿丹尼·霍斯金斯（Denny Hoskins）援引州隐私法，本月告诉他的州立法机构，除非有法院命令，否则他不打算提供这些数据。
除了关于该部门是否有权获取数据的法律问题外，还有关于其获取数据意图的疑问。迪隆表示，该部门希望帮助各州“清理”选民名单，而根据华纳周三发给该部门的一封信，司法部口头告知他的办公室，希望将各州的名单与一个名为“福利资格系统性外国人身份验证”（Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements，简称SAVE）的联邦移民数据系统进行比对。
各州已经可以选择自愿使用SAVE系统来审查其名单，以查找潜在的非公民选民，许多共和党官员也赞扬政府使该工具更易于使用。但CNN此前报道，这些比对存在大量误报，归化公民经常因联邦数据过时而被错误地认定为不符合资格的选民。
这一现实——以及宪法中关于选举由州一级管理的更广泛设想——使得拟议协议中的45天移除要求对选举官员尤其有问题。
“你不能期望给我一个45天的期限来完成这些工作，否则就……”沃森告诉CNN，他指出在密西西比州，移除工作不是由州官员而是由县办事员负责。“我们将遵循密西西比州法律，并确保我们的选民名单干净。”
其他选举官员则担心政府可能将这些数据用于其他目的，并怀疑其宣称的目标——即遵守《国家选民登记法》中关于“合理努力”移除已故或已搬迁选民的要求——是否只是一个借口。肯塔基州选举委员会在8月向该部门询问为何需要这些数据，在信中表示委员会“不清楚向司法部提供肯塔基州居民的驾驶执照号码如何有助于该机构宣称的目标。”
“他们不需要驾驶执照号码、社会保险号码和出生日期来确保我们正在尽合理努力维护选民名单，”另一个州的共和党选举官员告诉CNN。
为避免引起白宫的愤怒，该官员要求匿名，并提出数据可能被用于移民执法，或者作为“大棒”——如果中期选举对共和党不利时，以此来质疑选举合法性。
“如果各州不提供这些信息，而共和党人输了，他们可以回去说，‘看，这是因为他们没有给我们这些信息，所以他们作弊了，所有这些本不该投票的非法选民都投了票，’”该官员说。
幕后施压
最初，州官员在去年春夏收到了司法部的信件，要求他们提供关于选民名单维护做法和名单数据的信息。许多州提供了公开可得的信息，但随着夏末秋初的推进，跟进信件明确表示，该部门也在索要机密数据。
少数由共和党领导的州毫无异议地配合，但随着其他官员提出隐私担忧，政府起草了一份谅解备忘录，承诺遵守联邦隐私法，同时制定由联邦主导的名单审查流程。
华盛顿特区罗伯特·F·肯尼迪司法部大楼外的标志，摄于2025年6月1日。
Kevin Carter/Getty Images/File
当这些信件在12月进入选举办公室收件箱时，司法部给了各州七天时间回复，并通过电子邮件和电话跟进。
“如果今天结束时我们没有收到任何回复，司法部将视其为拒绝配合，”现在负责该部门投票部门的埃里克·内夫（Eric Neff）在司法部截止日当天告诉蒙大拿州国务卿克里斯蒂·雅各布森（Christi Jacobsen），这一说法来自布伦南中心获取的电子邮件。
在向共和党人加大压力的同时，司法部也在对拒不配合的民主党州官员提起新一轮诉讼。
“你可能在新闻中看到，本周早些时候我们起诉了六个州，因为它们拒绝提供选民登记名单，”另一位司法部律师在12月4日给爱达荷州国务卿办公室一位官员的语音信箱中表示（该信息由爱达荷州首府太阳报获取）。
“我们正在准备更多的诉讼。我想尽量不让大家卷入诉讼，但我还没有收到你们的任何回复，”这位此后已离开司法部的律师说。
根据CNN获取的司法部通信，只有阿拉斯加和德克萨斯两个州签署了该备忘录，而另有大约十几个州在不签署协议的情况下交出了数据，官员们在法庭诉讼中表示。
CNN的Fredreka Schouten和Marshall Cohen对本报道有贡献。
Even Republican election officials are balking at Trump Justice Department’s voter roll crusade
Published Feb 16, 2026, 5:30 AM ET / Source: CNN
By [Tierney Sneed]
1 hr 30 min ago
As the Trump administration has sued 25 mostly Democratic state election chiefs for their voter rolls, it has also encountered quieter resistance from Republican officials who have balked at the Justice Department’s demands for confidential voter registration information.
At least a half-dozen Republican-led state election offices have declined the Justice Department’s request for non-public voter data, which can include a voter’s Social Security number, driver license ID number or current residence, according to interviews, local media reporting and records obtained by CNN and by the Brennan Center, a left-leaning think tank that researches election issues.
“They can have the voter rolls. They’re gonna pay for it like everybody else,” West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner told CNN last month, referring to the public list that can be purchased in his state for $500. “They’re not going to get our personal information.”
Several other Republican election administrators have provided the sensitive data but refused to sign an agreement proposed by the Trump administration that would require them to remove voters deemed ineligible by the Justice Department.
In interviews with CNN about the department’s voter data quest, GOP election officials expressed concerns about the administration’s approach even though they’re aligned with the president on other matters of election security. They said the requests conflicted with state laws prohibiting the disclosure of sensitive voter information. They questioned the reasons the administration was seeking the data. And they bristled at the idea of the federal government — rather than state or local officials — leading the task of removing ineligible voters from the rolls.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
The voter data crusade is one of several ways the Trump administration is trying to insert itself more directly into election-related tasks carried out by states.
Trump has not let go of his unfounded fixation on mass voter fraud. He has called on Republicans to nationalize elections, installed fellow 2020 election deniers in the executive branch who are leading reviews of voting infrastructure, and the FBI recently seized 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia.
Voters fill out their ballots at a polling place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Election Day, November 4, 2025.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Republicans’ objections to the department’s voter data project came to head at a mid-December meeting between GOP state election officials and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the civil rights chief at DOJ who has been spearheading the data demands. DOJ officials rebuffed calls for adjustments to its plans for the voter information.
Among the biggest sticking points was a requirement in an agreement the DOJ proposed to govern the data production that would give states just 45 days to fix issues the administration identified in their voter rolls, according to Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, who ultimately handed over the data but refused to sign the agreement.
“We were adamant on the idea that maintaining voter rolls should be done on the state level,” Watson, who is also president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, told CNN.
Dhillon, in public remarks, has been dismissive of the state officials’ concerns.
“Some of the goofy responses that I have gotten from secretaries of state have included, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is highly confidential Social Security information. We can’t possibly give that to the federal government,’” Dhillon recently told the conservative journalist John Solomon. “That’s just silly because the federal government of course issues the Social Security numbers, and people routinely give it out on a daily basis when they go to the doctor or the DMV … that’s very silly.”
During the February 2 appearance on Solomon’s show, Dhillon hinted that more lawsuits would be filed within one to two weeks against the recalcitrant states. No new voter roll cases have been filed since December.
Doubts about DOJ’s intentions for the data
Election officials have pointed to state privacy laws in explaining why they cannot turn over their voters’ personal information.
“If we could legally comply, we would promptly do so,” Oklahoma State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax said in a letter to the Department this month, first reported by Oklahoma News 4 and obtained by CNN. In the lawsuits that Dhillon brought to obtain the data, some judges have already rejected DOJ arguments that the federal laws the department is relying on trump those state privacy protections.
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, citing state privacy laws, told his state’s legislature this month that he did not intend to produce the data absent a court order.
Alongside the legal questions about whether the department is entitled to the data are questions about its stated intentions for obtaining it. Dhillon has said the department wants to help the states “clean” their rolls, and according to a letter Warner sent the department Wednesday, the DOJ verbally communicated to his office that it wants to compare the states’ list with a federal system of immigrant data known the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program.
States already have the option to voluntarily use the SAVE system to review their rolls for potential noncitizens, and many Republican officials have praised the administration for making the tool easier to use. But still, those comparisons have been rife with false positives, CNN previously reported, with naturalized citizens often wrongly identified as ineligible voters because the federal data is outdated.
That reality — along with the Constitution’s broader vision of elections being run at the state level — has made the 45-day removal requirement in the proposed agreement especially problematic for election officials.
“You can’t expect to send me a 45-day window to get this done or else,” Watson told CNN, noting that in Mississippi, removals aren’t done by state officials but by county clerks. “We are going to go by Mississippi law and we are going to make sure our voter rolls clean.”
Other election officials were wary that the administration might use the data for other purposes and have wondered whether the stated goal — compliance with the National Voter Registration Act mandate of “reasonable efforts” to remove voters who have died or moved — is just a pretext. The Kentucky State Board of Elections asked the department in August to explain why it needed the data, in a letter that said the board was “unclear as to how providing Kentuckians’ driver’s license numbers to DOJ furthers the agency’s stated goal.”
“They don’t need the driver’s license, Social Security number and date of birth to make sure that we’re making a reasonable effort at maintaining our voter rolls,” a Republican elections official in another state told CNN.
The official, who asked for anonymity to avoid drawing the White House’s ire, floated the possibility that the data would be used for immigration enforcement or as a “cudgel” to cast doubt on the midterms if they went badly for Republicans.
“If states don’t give this information and then Republicans lose and they can go back and say, ‘See, it’s because they didn’t give us this information, so they cheated and all these illegal people that shouldn’t have been voting voted,’” the official said.
Behind the scenes arm-twisting
Initially, state officials received letters from the Justice Department seeking information last spring and summer about their list maintenance practices and data from their rolls. Many provided the publicly available information, but as summer turned into fall, follow-up letters made clear that the department was demanding the confidential data as well.
A handful of Republican-led states complied without objection, but as other officials raised privacy concerns, the administration drafted the Memorandum of Understanding that promised compliance with federal privacy law while laying out the list review process that would be driven by the feds.
A sign is displayed outside of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2025.
Kevin Carter/Getty Images/File
When the letters landed in election office inboxes in December, the DOJ gave states just seven days to respond and followed up with both emails and phone calls.
“If do not hear anything end of day today, the DOJ will take that as refusal to comply,” Eric Neff, now the head of the department’s voting section, told Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen on the day of the DOJ’s deadline, according to an email obtained by the Brennan Center.
As it was ramping up pressure on Republicans, the Justice Department was rolling out new rounds of lawsuits against Democratic state officials for noncompliance.
“You may have seen in the news that we have sued six states earlier this week for refusing to provide their voter registration lists,” another DOJ lawyer said in a December 4 voicemail left with an official in the Idaho secretary of state’s office that was obtained by Idaho Capital Sun.
“And we’re preparing additional lawsuits. I’d like to keep everyone out of that as much as possible. But I haven’t heard anything back from you all,” the DOJ attorney, who has since left the department, said.
Only two states — Alaska and Texas — have signed the memorandum, according to DOJ correspondence obtained by CNN, while about a dozen more are turning it over without entering the agreement, officials have said in court proceedings.
CNN’s Fredreka Schouten and Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.