The Associated Press has been tracking and reporting on how President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was preparing to play a far different role in voting and elections than it had under previous administrations. Reporters Ali Swenson and Gary Fields, part of AP’s democracy team, worked with AP statehouse reporters across the country to quantify an unprecedented outreach by the Justice Department to the states for voter records.
While AP and others had previously reported on the DOJ’s contacts with the states, AP was the first to show the extent of the outreach and what information the DOJ was seeking. That included voter registration lists with detailed data on individual voters, as well as information that could help the department investigate instances of voter fraud.
They also learned that the outreach included an attorney from the DOJ’s criminal division, raising new questions about how the information would be used. In at least one case, inquiries sought specific information about noncitizens on voter rolls—raising concerns that the data could be used to support the administration’s deportation efforts.
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