DENVER, Colo. (KOAA) — State elections officials in nine states, including Colorado, have sent a letter to the Department of Justice expressing concern and distrust about the recent collection of state voter data.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold led the letter, asking the DOJ why they want this information and who it is being shared with. Ultimately, there is concern that federal agencies are not following the law.
“We have not received a request like this in my tenure as Secretary of State, and it is highly unprecedented,” Griswold told Scripps News Denver Anchor Jessica Porter. “Ultimately, we want answers. We do not want them to use information, putting it through untested, unreliable databases to try to prove conspiracies that are unprovable because they're conspiracies.”
Secretaries of State are responsible for overseeing elections in their states. The Secretaries of State in Arizona, California, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington all signed the letter.
Each state received a letter from the DOJ in recent months requesting voter registration lists. In many cases, requests sought unredacted voter data that includes sensitive information such as dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and Social Security numbers.
The letter expresses concern that voter data was shared with the Department of Homeland Security and that officials with both agencies shared contradictory information on how they intended to use the voter data:
“In an August 28, 2025 call, DOJ’s Michael Gates represented to Secretaries of State and senior staff that the DOJ intended to use voter information to assess compliance with the voter list maintenance provisions of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
DHS’s Heather Honey, who has a history of spreading false claims about elections, told attendees at a September 11, 2025 meeting that DHS had not received voter data or requested it. She then suggested that DHS had no intention of using voter data. The same day, DHS publicly contradicted her representation and confirmed that they had received this data and would input it into the unproven and potentially insecure citizenship-check system, SAVE.”
Griswold said, unlike other states, the voter data requested from Colorado was public data that anyone can request and not sensitive information. So, her office complied with the request for voter information.
“The DOJ request that we received was really poorly written. It was riddled with issues, and we followed the law to the extent that we assume the DOJ is asking us for things that they legally have a right to,” Griswold said. “I think it's really important to look at what is happening with this data in the broader context. President Trump has attacked our democracy now for years.”
The letter asks Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to respond by Dec. 1.
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