(Georgia Recorder) — U.S. Department of Justice officials have refiled a lawsuit against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seeking Georgia’s unredacted voter data, this time in an Atlanta-based court in the Northern District of Georgia, where Raffensperger’s primary office is located.
Last week, a federal judge in the Middle District of Georgia dismissed a similar lawsuit, arguing that the Macon-based court lacked jurisdiction over the case “because the Attorney General’s demand was not made, and the demanded records are not located, in the Middle District of Georgia.”
Georgia is now one of at least three states in which federal judges have dismissed lawsuits seeking sensitive voter information. The judge assigned to the new lawsuit filed in Atlanta, Eleanor L. Ross, was appointed by President Barack Obama.
In both lawsuits, the Department of Justice argued that Georgia’s unredacted voter registration list was needed as part of an ongoing investigation into “Georgia’s compliance with federal election law.”
Raffensperger had previously sent redacted voter registration data to Justice Department officials, but he argued that state law prohibited his office from divulging the Social Security numbers, full dates of birth and driver’s license numbers of Georgia residents. He maintained that stance in the face of a pressure campaign from some state lawmakers and members of Georgia’s State Election Board urging him to turn over the data.
In an op-ed published earlier this month by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Raffensperger defended his decision not to release the unredacted data. He also criticised the lawmakers who cosponsored a Senate resolution urging him to comply with the Justice Department’s request for the data, saying they were “putting political ambition ahead of common sense and public service.”
The resolution, which passed the Senate Ethics Committee last week, will be up for a vote Thursday in the Senate.
Georgia is among at least 44 states who have received requests from the Justice Department for their complete voter data, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is tracking the requests. It is also among the 24 states that the Brennan Center says are currently facing lawsuits for refusing to turn over all the requested data, which includes voters’ names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
In September, the Trump administration disclosed that the Department of Justice is also sharing state voter roll information with the Department of Homeland Security in a search for noncitizens.
Read the Justice Department’s full complaint below:
