Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is refusing to turn over sensitive personal information from Georgia’s voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Justice in response to the Trump administration’s ongoing legal campaign aimed at forcing state and local officials to disclose voter roll information to the federal government.
But pressure from some lawmakers and other state officials for him to turn over the data is mounting, despite Raffensperger’s repeated claims that doing so would violate state law.
In December, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit arguing that Georgia’s unredacted voter registration list was needed as part of an ongoing investigation into “Georgia’s compliance with federal election law.”
Raffensperger had previously sent Justice Department officials some of the state’s voter registration data, but he argued that state law prohibited his office from divulging the Social Security numbers, full dates of birth and driver’s license numbers of Georgia residents.
In a Wednesday court filing, attorneys for the secretary of state’s office filed a motion requesting that the lawsuit be dismissed, arguing that the Justice Department is exceeding its authority in requesting the records, that it lacks the jurisdiction to sue and that the Macon-based court in which the case was filed was the wrong venue.