Zero for Eighteen: Why Courts Keep Refusing to Hand Over State Voter Databases

The fight over the New Jersey voter rolls ended Wednesday, at least at the district court level, with a 17-page opinion that never reached the political controversy swirling around it.

U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking the state’s complete voter registration database — including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers — and did so with prejudice, meaning the department cannot refile the case in its current form. It can appeal, and it has already said it will.

By most tallies, this marks the eighteenth ruling against the federal government in its nationwide campaign for state voter data. The department has not won a single one.

The Legal Question, Stripped of Politics

The government’s claim rested on Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which requires election officials to preserve certain records and make them available for federal inspection on request.

Quraishi’s answer turned on what a “record or paper” actually is. He concluded the provision covers documents that election officials receive — voter registration applications being the obvious example — not databases that states themselves build and maintain.

New Jersey’s statewide list, he wrote, is not a record the state must produce to the United States. He described it as a live, dynamic database drawing from multiple state agencies and requiring continuous updating.

That last point carried real weight in his reasoning. Title III prohibits altering the records it covers, while the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act require states to keep their computerized lists current. Reading the 1960 statute the way the department proposed would put those obligations in direct conflict — a state would be simultaneously required to freeze and to update the same file.

Quraishi ruled without holding oral argument, and noted that he was joining at least sixteen other district courts, including a court in the same district, and one federal appeals court in rejecting the claim.

The Timing Was Awkward

The dismissal landed roughly a week after Governor Mikie Sherrill disclosed something that had given the department fresh ammunition.

A software failure in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle Commission system between June 2023 and June 2024 resulted in approximately 6,600 people being registered to vote after indicating they were not U.S. citizens. Around 400 of them subsequently cast ballots in at least one election.

Justice Department lawyers notified the court and argued the revelation strengthened their case for access.

Quraishi acknowledged the argument and set it aside in a footnote, writing that whether the department is acting in good faith is not relevant to his analysis and has no bearing on whether it is entitled to the information it seeks.

That framing cuts both directions, and it is worth noting. The judge did not say the error was unimportant or that the department’s motives were suspect. He said the statute either authorizes the demand or it does not, and a serious registration failure does not change the text.

The Separate Standoff

A related dispute remains unresolved. The day before the ruling, Sherrill formally told the Justice Department she would not release personally identifiable information about the individuals mistakenly registered — data the federal government could use to pursue prosecutions.

Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said the state would continue following state and federal law to protect voters’ privacy and personal information, and framed the pattern of rulings as courts unanimously rejecting federal overreach.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon responded to the dismissal by sharpening the department’s criticism, accusing the governor of shielding illegitimate voters and signaling the administration will keep pursuing the data.

New Jersey had previously provided the federal government with its publicly available voter list, which excludes the private fields. The dispute was always about the unredacted version.

The Wider Campaign

Roughly 30 states have been sued for their voter files. At least a dozen have handed them over voluntarily.

From that voluntarily supplied data, administration officials say they have identified hundreds of thousands of duplicate registrations and hundreds of thousands of deceased individuals still listed.

State election officials counter that maintaining accurate rolls is continuous work, performed year-round using multiple cross-checking sources — and that duplicate or outdated entries surface in any large database without indicating fraud. A person who moves between states, for instance, may appear on two lists before the older record is cleared.

A detail that complicates the partisan reading: while many of the states being sued are Democratic-led, several Republican-led states have also refused, including Georgia, Idaho, New Hampshire, Utah and West Virginia. And although Quraishi was appointed by President Biden, several judges who previously dismissed these suits were appointed by President Trump during his first term. A divided Sixth Circuit panel has also sided with the states.

The consistency of outcomes across appointing presidents suggests the rulings turn on statutory interpretation rather than politics — which is roughly what the opinions themselves say.

Both Sides of the Underlying Argument

The federal case is not frivolous. If a state’s registration system can add thousands of self-identified noncitizens over a twelve-month span without detection, the government’s interest in examining how list maintenance actually works is understandable. New Jersey’s own disclosure is the strongest evidence available that errors of consequence occur.

The states’ position is equally coherent. Handing a full database of driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers to any entity creates security exposure, and states argue Congress never granted this particular authority. Several have added that they distrust what the data would be used for.

Both concerns can be legitimate at once. What courts have repeatedly declined to do is resolve that policy tension by reading a 1960 statute more expansively than its language supports.

What Happens Next

The department is appealing a similar loss in Pennsylvania, and an appeal here appears certain. With midterm elections in November and election integrity a central theme for the administration, the pressure to keep litigating is unlikely to ease.

If the government wants what it is asking for, though, the path may run through Congress rather than the courts. Eighteen rulings pointing the same direction is a strong signal about the current statute — and a fairly clear roadmap for anyone who wants to change it.