President Donald Trump's Justice Department attached the "wrong document" to a filing in their lawsuit against the state of Minneosta to obtain their full, unredacted voter rolls, liberal elections outlet Democracy Docket reported on Friday.
"The Trump DOJ’s latest blunder came one day after it asked a federal court for permission to fix what judges across the country have already called a fatal defect in its voter roll demands: failing to explain why it needed the data in the first place," said the report. "But instead of waiting, DOJ rushed to file a new 'additional basis' for its demand — and fumbled the rollout."
Specifically, DOJ claimed to attach an example of a noncitizen potentially voting in the 2024 election. However, "the exhibit DOJ attached to support that claim didn’t mention the alleged incident at all. Instead, it was an unrelated January letter about Minnesota’s same-day voter registration system — a separate issue that has had nothing to do with DOJ’s case to seize Minnesota’s unredacted voter rolls."
DOJ officials acknowledged the mistake and updated the document. However, per the report, "The corrected document still relied on a recent news report about a single alleged noncitizen voter as the basis for demanding Minnesota’s full voter rolls."
This comes after the DOJ has already lost nearly half a dozen similar lawsuits in states across the country, with judges tossing suits to obtain the voter rolls of California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
A majority of states, including many run by Republicans, have refused to turn over this data, which in many cases includes full Social Security numbers, as the request is a violation of state law — though a handful, like Texas, have complied.
The Secretary of State of Wyoming is currently facing a legal complaint alleging he ignored state law to hand over the requested data to the Trump administration.
