Federal judge dismisses USDOJ lawsuit seeking New Mexico voter rolls

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit from the United States Department of Justice seeking detailed New Mexico voter information in a ruling the New Mexico Attorney General and Secretary of State’s Office hailed for preserving the integrity of the state’s elections.

The USDOJ filed lawsuits in December against New Mexico and five other states for failing to produce statewide voter registration lists. The lawsuit came after Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver resisted formal requests from federal officials to turn over voter rolls due to concerns about what the data would be used for. 

The USDOJ sought the state’s full voter list, including Social Security numbers and birth dates. The Secretary of State usually redacts those details for any publicly released list of voters. By the time of the lawsuit, Toulouse Oliver had already given the federal government voter rolls that included years of birth but not Social Security numbers, she told Source NM in December. 

U.S. District Court Judge Judith Herrera, whom former President George W. Bush appointed to the bench in 2003, ruled that the USDOJ lacked any basis for the lawsuit and failed to adequately argue that the unredacted voter rolls would enable the federal government to evaluate whether New Mexico is complying with federal election law. 

“Had the DOJ identified as the factual ‘basis’ statistical anomalies within New Mexico’s registration data or conduct associated with the State’s [Voter Registration Logs] maintenance practices, then the outcome may have been different,” Herrera wrote in her ruling. 

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, in a news release about the decision, said the USDOJ has failed to receive any unredacted voter data despite ultimately filing 14 similar lawsuits in other states. 

“The court’s ruling makes clear that DOJ demanded our voters’ private records without a shred of evidence to justify it,” Torrez said in a statement. “New Mexico’s elections are administered with integrity, and we will keep fighting to keep the federal government out of our voters’ private information.”  

Toulouse Oliver also hailed the judge’s ruling, saying disclosing New Mexico voters’ private data  “could carry very real and severe consequences for the personal lives of New Mexicans participating in our democratic process.”