Trump administration sues Brad Raffensperger in Macon over election records. What we know
The Department of Justice is suing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Macon, in an effort to force him to provide detailed voter information after he allegedly refused to do so.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, for the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, filed the suit Thursday against Raffensperger for not providing voting records, including personal information of voters, to the DOJ.
Dhillon said in a video posted to her Instagram account that she’s in litigation with 18 different states in 19 lawsuits relating to this issue.
Dhillon requested the information for an investigation that the DOJ is conducting to ensure that Georgia is complying with statewide voter registration list maintenance requirements. The DOJ alleges in its suit that it asked Raffensperger for that information and his office refused to provide it. The DOJ argues this violates the Civil Rights Act of 1960, according to the lawsuit.
She requested two times in a letter to Raffensperger to provide voting records that include “all fields,” which would include Georgia residents’ full name, date of birth, residential address, state driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number, court records show.
She also asked for the contact information of local election officials, since they are also part of maintaining the voter registration list, according to the lawsiut.
Raffensperger hasn’t turned over the records because he claims that Georgia law prohibits the disclosure of the specific records Dhillon requested. Raffensperger did provide some requested records on Dec. 8, but the records excluded “sensitive information that implicates special privacy concerns,” his attorney, Charlene McGowan, said in a letter to the DOJ.
Lacking that “sensitive information,” the DOJ has asked a judge to declare that Raffensperger violated the Civil Rights Act. The DOJ also wants a judge to order Raffensperger to provide the records.
Dhillon said these privacy claims were “total nonsense,” and indicated she’s trying to confirm registered voters are U.S. citizens.
Why does the DOJ want Georgia voters’ information?
Dhillon’s team had been attempting to contact Raffensperger since July 9 for an investigation into how Georgia complies with statewide voter registration list maintenance provisions, according to the lawsuit.
Under the National Voter Registration Act, all states must provide “all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters,” Dhillon’s team said in a July 9 letter.
The National Voter Registration Act was passed to “protect the integrity of the electoral process,” and establishes “external checks on potential administrative oversights or inefficiencies regarding ineligible voters appearing on voter rolls,” according to the July 9 letter.
The DOJ didn’t get an answer from Raffensperger, according to the lawsuit, so officials tried to contact his office again on Aug. 7. In that letter, she explained she had the authority to seek the voting records under the Help America Vote Act, which gives the DOJ the authority to enforce voter registration list requirements.
Dhillon also said Raffensperger’s office was required to retain and preserve voting records and make them available for inspection, reproduction, and copying by the U.S. attorney general.
Dhillon wrote in the lawsuit that she was filing it in the Macon Division of the federal court system because “a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the United States’ claims occurred in this district ....“
‘Georgia has the cleanest voter rolls in the country’
In response to the DOJ, Charlene McGowan, a lawyer for Raffensperger, said Georgia “conducts rigorous voter list maintenance to the fullest extent permissible under state and federal law.”
“Our elections division and county registrars are continuously updating Georgia’s newly modernized and secure voter registration database using a wide variety of reliable data sources that detect when voters move to a new county, move out of state, receive felony sentences, or are deceased,” McGowan said in the letter to the DOJ.
This year, over 580,000 registrations have been canceled, and nearly 300,000 registrations have been deemed inactive, according to McGowan.
The Secretary of State’s office partners with the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Georgia Department of Driver Services to ensure that eligible Georgians can vote and that the voter list is current and accurate, McGowan said.
McGowan also recommended that the secretary of state and the DOJ collaborate to improve search databases and law enforcement efforts against non-citizens attempting to vote, also suggesting they work together to streamline the process of how the DOJ reports felonies to state election officials, and call on Congress to modernize the National Voter Registration Act, according to court records.
Raffensperger said in a statement to The Telegraph that Georgia “has the cleanest voter rolls in the country” as a result of his efforts.
“We shared our nation-leading list maintenance practices and public voter roll data with the DOJ (on) December 8 at their request, and we look forward to working together to eliminate the federal barriers that prevent even cleaner voter rolls,” Raffensperger said. “Hardworking Georgians can rest easy knowing this data was shared strictly in accordance with state law that protect voters’ privacy.”
Trump administration’s election battles in Georgia
This is not the first time President Donald Trump and his administration have sought to challenge Georgia over election issues. Trump lost the Peach State by a razor-thin margin in 2020, ultimately contributing to his election loss to former President Joe Biden. In that race, Trump was insistent on voter fraud in multiple states, including Georgia, despite the fact that evidence of fraud was never found.
Trump was recorded on tape talking to Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, and asking him to “find” votes for Trump, according to multiple media reports.
Trump was criminally charged in Georgia over his efforts to cast doubt on the state’s election results, but charges against him and others were dropped, according to multiple media reports.
In a video posted to her Instagram, Dhillon said she is taking legal action against Fulton County because they still have election information from 2020 that she would “like to look at.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2025 at 2:51 PM.
