IL Refuses To Give Feds Voters' Driver's License And Social Security Numbers

Illinois election officials have said they will not give voters’ driver’s license numbers or partial social security numbers to the U.S. Department of Justice, rejecting a Civil Rights Division request for the information.

“This request implicates state and federal law as well as Illinoisans’ interests in exercising their right to vote without risking the privacy of their personal information,” Marni Malowitz, general counsel for the Illinois State Board of Elections, wrote in a letter to federal authorities dated Tuesday, which was uploaded by The Chicago Tribune.

“As a state agency, the Illinois State Board of Elections (SBE) has a duty to abide by all state and federal laws governing the protection of sensitive personal information.”

The state last month turned over to federal authorities its voter registration list, excluding social security and driver’s license numbers. The Civil Rights Division responded with a request for the missing information in a letter uploaded by Capitol News Illinois.

In that letter, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote that, “Any statewide prohibitions are preempted by federal law.”

In the state's follow-up letter, Malowitz wrote that the Illinois board was “unaware of any authority suggesting that these federal provisions conflict with Illinois law in a manner that would compel disclosures that are otherwise impermissible under state law.”

Malowitz went on to write that the board would be sending another letter by Sept. 10 that would include information demonstrating the state complies with National Voter Registration Act list maintenance requirements.

“While SBE respects and shares the Department’s commitment to assessing Illinois’ compliance with the NVRA, we remain concerned about the scope of and authority for the Department’s request, given that the NVRA permits redaction of sensitive personal information,” Malowitz wrote.

Over three months, the justice department's voting section requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally from early August. Of those, nine were Democrats, five were Republicans and one was a bipartisan commission.

The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government.

It also signals the transformation of the justice department's involvement in elections under President Donald Trump. The department historically has focused on protecting access to the ballot box. Today, it is taking steps to crack down on voter fraud and noncitizen voting, both of which are rare but have been the subject of years of false claims from Trump and his allies.

But the department's requests for voter registration data are more problematic, said Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general who teaches at Loyola Law School. That is because of the Privacy Act of 1974, which put strict guidelines on data collection by the federal government. The government is required to issue a notice in the Federal Register and notify appropriate congressional committees when it seeks personally identifiable information about individuals.

Becker said there is nothing in federal law that compels states to comply with requests for sensitive personal data about their residents.