The Illinois State Board of Elections has responded to a Department of Justice request for comprehensive voter data by providing some information while withholding sensitive personal details.

In an August 11, 2025 letter to DOJ officials, Illinois State Board of Elections General Counsel Marni M. Malowitz confirmed the state provided a list of election officials responsible for voter list maintenance and delivered Illinois’ complete statewide voter registration list as of July 15, 2025. However, the state excluded sensitive data including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, state ID numbers, and dates of birth, citing federal and state privacy laws.

The DOJ request, dated July 28, 2025, demanded extensive voter data from Illinois as part of what experts describe as an unusually broad federal investigation into state election practices. The 14-day deadline initially imposed by federal officials was extended to September 10, 2025, at the state’s request.

Illinois is one of at least 19 states that have received similar requests from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division over the past three months.

“The Department of Justice asked for the complete voter file for the state of Illinois, including all fields in that file, which is an absolutely huge file that contains so much sensitive data about Illinois citizens, including driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers and dates of birth that the Department of Justice is not entitled to receive and not entitled to demand,” David Becker, a former attorney in the DOJ’s voting section who now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research told Capitol News Illinois. “They know this. Other states have told them this, and yet they continue to seek to receive this information, citing sections of federal law that don’t apply and don’t require that.”

The DOJ’s Voting Section is probing Illinois’ compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which mandates state officials to ensure the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters. 

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to let the public review records that show how they keep voter registration lists accurate and up to date. States must also submit reports to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission every two years, outlining their voter roll maintenance efforts, such as mailing address confirmation notices and removing voters who have died or relocated.

But the Privacy Act of 1974 may protect against such broad federal data collection.

In a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, Illinois clarified that it uses a “bottom-up” election system. In this model, local election authorities, not the state, are responsible for creating and maintaining voter registration lists.

Both the DOJ’s recent letter and Judicial Watch’s complaint charge discrepancies in Illinois’ federal voter roll reports from the two years before the 2024 election. According to these two organizations, records show that 32 of the state’s 102 counties reported sending no confirmation notices at all, while 16 others claimed to have mailed notices to more than 100% of their registered voters.

The DOJ is now requesting a full list of all election officials responsible for voter roll maintenance between November 2022 and November 2024, along with explanations for these irregularities. The department is also asking the state to provide the total number of voters who have been deemed ineligible since November 2022 due to non-citizenship, mental incompetence, or felony convictions.

The state has acknowledged data gaps, noting that three counties — Gallatin, Alexander, and Union — lost voter history data during recent vendor transitions, though officials expressed optimism the information would be restored.