The U.S. Department of Justice sued Oregon on Sept. 16, claiming the state violated federal law by not providing requested data, including voter rolls containing personal information.

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read is also named in the suit.

“The United States Department of Justice is suing me for doing my job—for keeping my oath to the people of Oregon. That’s not normal,” Read said in a statement. “The federal government is trying to intimidate my office into handing over Oregonians’ private voter data.”

The DOJ is also suing Maine for not sharing their list of registered voters.

A press release from the DOJ says the states refused to provide the federal government with the requested information but shared the information with “a private organization.”

The organization, the Electronic Registration Information Center, is a nonprofit intended to help states identify inactive voters who should be removed from their lists by comparing voter rolls between states.

Those comparisons are meant to help flag voters who may have moved, died or have duplicate registrations.

ERIC’s 24 member states, which include Oregon and Washington, fund the organization.

License, ID and social security numbers as well as birth dates submitted to ERIC are put through a “cryptographic one-way hashing tool” that makes them unreadable, but able to be compared with other states.

Read said Republican states also did not share “confidential voter data” but were not facing the same lawsuits.

The DOJ requested Oregon provide a list of registered voters, information on how Oregon purges its voter rolls and data on registered voters who were found to be ineligible. The voter rolls provided should include unredacted names, addresses and social security numbers, the DOJ said.

Read denied the request in a July 23 letter, saying he did not believe there was a legal basis for the requests and was concerned over how the Trump administration would use the data.

“Oregonians elected me to ensure that our state sets a national standard for free, fair, and secure elections,” Read said in the letter. “They did not elect me to hand over Oregonians’ personal data to a government that does not demonstrate an interest in respecting the freedom and rights that our country is literally founded upon.”

Oregon’s Election System Under Scrutiny

President Donald Trump’s concerns over the security of mail-in voting and potential fraud have intensified since his loss in the 2020 election.

Republican lawmakers in Oregon sponsored a bill in the 2025 session that would have limited vote-by-mail. The bill did not advance, but a flood of submitted testimony on the bill briefly shut down the legislature’s website.

Oregon’s Motor Voter program, which registers people at the DMV, was found to have resulted in erroneous registrations and was paused for months before resuming in February. An advisory committee is considering potential rule changes for the program.

An October 2024 lawsuit over what conservative group Judicial Watch claimed was improper maintenance of the state’s voter rolls is ongoing.

Trump said in August he would work to end all mail-in voting before the 2026 midterms.

He issued an executive order in March tightening vote by mail deadlines and creating new requirements for voter identification. Oregon and Washington sued in response, claiming Trump was exceeding his authority. The suit is ongoing.

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Anastasia Mason covers state government for the Statesman Journal. Reach her at acmason@statesmanjournal.com or 971-208-5615.
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Trump administration sues Oregon, secretary of state over voter data
Reporting by Anastasia Mason, Salem Statesman Journal / Salem Statesman Journal
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