\u2018We\u2019re Not Going to Stop\u2019 <\/h2>\n
Newly-confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche made headlines over the weekend for other, arguably, more alarming remarks<\/a> and actions than what I am about to unpack. During an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Blanche refused to say that the Justice Department would act independently from the White House. On Friday, he and FBI Director Kash Patel openly campaigned for a Republican midterms candidate alongside President Trump. <\/p>\n But during his sprint of weekend public appearances, Blanche also acknowledged that he might take the Justice Department\u2019s obviously-failing effort to seize election administration rights from states all the way to the Supreme Court. During an interview with Kristin Welker on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on Sunday, Welker asked whether Blanche would be willing to take his campaign to seize voter roll data from states to the Supreme Court. The DOJ\u2019s efforts to sue for states\u2019 voter roll data has been hit with 22 district court losses thus far, most recently in Nevada.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens,\u201d Blanche said when asked about involving the high court <\/strong>in the floundering campaign that began under fired Attorney General Pam Bondi. \u201cAbsolutely, it\u2019s a possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n As TPM\u2019s Khaya Himmelman has been tracking for months now<\/a>, the Justice Department is trying to force states to hand over unredacted voter roll data ostensibly to purge states\u2019 voters rolls of supposed noncitizens, whom President Trump has claimed are illegally voting en masse for Democrats in federal elections. This is a widely debunked myth<\/a> that Republicans and Trump tend to elevate when it is politically convenient for them, but the truth is, noncitizens voting in federal elections is vanishingly rare, in part because it is illegal and the consequences for doing so are already incredibly harsh. <\/p>\n That said, the Justice Department has sued 30 states overall to try to exert authority over state\u2019s constitutional right to administer elections. It wants this data so it can run it through a faulty database \u2014 known to mistakenly identify eligible voters as ineligible<\/a> \u2014 and purge supposed noncitizens from the rolls, which states already do on a regular basis to clean up voter rolls ahead of elections.<\/p>\n When NBC\u2019s Welker asked Blanche if it\u2019d suffered enough legal defeats to give up the crusade, Blanche said, \u201cwe\u2019re not going to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re relying on a statute passed by Congress that allows us, in the right circumstances, to review and get those voter rolls,\u201d said Blanche. \u201cSo, no, we\u2019re not going to stop doing what I think every American should expect us to do.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, not one single federal judge has sided with the Trump Justice Department\u2019s argument for why it should have access to the data \u2014 and we\u2019re talking about judges who have been appointed by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. As Khaya has reported for TPM:<\/a> <\/p>\n The data the DOJ is after includes sensitive information like drivers licenses and Social Security numbers \u2014 personal identifying information that the federal government is not<\/a> entitled to.<\/p>\n To make its case, the DOJ has been relying on provisions in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)<\/a>, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA<\/a>) to argue it is allowed to seize the information. But, as the courts have found time and time again, none of these statutes give the federal government the authority to demand state\u2019s voter rolls.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n