It starts the way these things always start: with paperwork, deadlines — and then, suddenly, court filings.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon announced Monday that the Department of Justice has launched 23 lawsuits against 22 states for not complying with federal voter roll verification requirements.
In mid-September, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sued Oregon and Maine and their Secretaries of State for failing to provide information on voter list maintenance procedures and electronic copies of statewide voter registration lists.
“States simply cannot pick and choose which federal laws they will comply with, including our voting laws, which ensure that all American citizens have equal access to the ballot in federal elections,” Dhillon said.
“American citizens have a right to feel confident in the integrity of our electoral process,” Dhillon added, “and the refusal of certain states to protect their citizens against vote dilution will result in legal consequences.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows responded not with a brief, but with a barb: “Go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”
Then came the next wave.
In late September, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit against six more states after the DOJ accused them of refusing to turn over voter registration records: California, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Dhillon says this has been building for months—and she described it as a grind of requests, resistance, and refusals.
“A few months ago I started this process of requesting the voter rolls from all the states and territories in the United States and asked them to share them with us so that we can help these states compare voter rolls against our government data and clean their voter rolls as the requirement states under federal law the Help America Vote Act, amongst others,” Dhillon stated on The Charlie Kirk Show on Monday.
“So there’s a lot of hemming and hawing, including from red states, a lot of back-and-forth, and then some outright refusal to cooperate from many states; and so I am proud to report that today I’m in litigation with twenty-two states in the United States; that’s actually twenty-three lawsuits, since California has two lawsuits,” she continued.
“I also have voluntary compliance from thirteen states, including Texas and several others. And even on Christmas Eve, I had secretaries of state uploading their data to the DOJ so that we could do our work on it and help them clean their voter rolls.”
A message to the 22 states: show us the list—and prove it’s clean.
Watch the clip below:
We are in litigation with 22 states to restore integrity to our elections and @CivilRights will NOT let up! With @AGPamBondi’s relentless leadership, clean voter rolls are on the way! pic.twitter.com/jAc7g77AGN
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) December 30, 2025
