Pennsylvania’s top election official has rejected a request from the Trump administration to hand over sensitive voter information, setting up a clash between state privacy laws and the federal government’s effort to scrutinize voter rolls, The Hill reported.
Pennsylvania Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro appointed Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt to lead the state’s election efforts in 2023. This week, he rebuffed a Department of Justice demand for voter data that included driver’s license and Social Security numbers of all registered Pennsylvanians.
“This request and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process,” Schmidt wrote in a letter Thursday to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
The Trump administration has requested more detailed voter information from several states, arguing that the data is necessary to confirm compliance with the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. The initiative is part of President Trump’s broader push to prevent noncitizens from voting.
Schmidt, a Republican, said his office was willing to provide a public version of the state’s voter rolls, which includes names, addresses, ages, and voting histories. But he emphasized that releasing more sensitive identifiers would violate Pennsylvania law.
“As Pennsylvania’s chief election official, I take seriously my obligation to ensure that our county election officials faithfully maintain our voter rolls,” Schmidt wrote. “Likewise, I take seriously my responsibility to safeguard the private information that Pennsylvanians entrust to the care of our county election officials.”
He added: “None of the legal bases provided in your letter justify or authorize providing these fields and disregarding the strong protections on voter privacy enshrined in our commonwealth’s laws.”
According to the Hill, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, argued in an Aug. 14 letter that the additional voter data was necessary to “ascertain Pennsylvania’s compliance with the list maintenance requirements” in federal law.
Schmidt has been a prominent figure in election debates. While serving as a Philadelphia elections commissioner during the 2020 election, he drew national attention for rejecting claims that Pennsylvania’s voting systems were rife with fraud.
“I have seen the most fantastical things on social media, making completely ridiculous allegations that have no basis in fact at all and seen them spread,” Schmidt told CNN in November 2020.
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