Oklahoma announced Tuesday it agreed to turn over its full voter rolls to the Trump Justice Department — including sensitive personal data the state had previously refused to provide.
Under a newly executed settlement, state officials will give the DOJ a complete copy of Oklahoma’s statewide voter registration database, including voters’ names, birth dates, residential addresses and identifying numbers, including driver’s license and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
The agreement marks a significant expansion of the DOJ’s access to voter data from states across the country — and a reversal for Oklahoma, which had previously resisted turning over sensitive personal information in unredacted form.
State officials had offered to share a version of the voter file without Social Security and driver’s license information, but the DOJ rejected that offer and sued.
Now, after weeks of negotiations, the state has agreed to provide the data anyway.
“In Oklahoma, we are committed to the integrity of our elections,” Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, said in a press release. “The State of Oklahoma will cooperate with efforts to eliminate voter fraud and safeguard electoral processes in accordance with the law. We are committed to both election integrity and the protection of personal information.”
In exchange, the DOJ dismissed the lawsuit against Oklahoma — avoiding a court ruling on whether it has the legal authority to demand such records.
The agreement also allows the department to seek additional voter data in the future and requires Oklahoma to transmit the records through federal systems.
The outcome comes after a series of missteps in the DOJ’s handling of the Oklahoma case. Federal officials spent weeks emailing election officials at the wrong address, repeatedly following up on a request the state had never received.
Even so, the department ultimately secured the data.
The Oklahoma deal comes as the DOJ continues to press similar demands across the country.
The department has filed lawsuits against dozens of states seeking access to unredacted voter rolls — an effort that has drawn resistance from both Democratic and Republican officials and has already been rejected in several federal courts.
In recent court testimony, DOJ lawyers revealed that about 16 or 17 states had already given up their voter rolls to the department.
“This settlement is a positive step forward for election integrity,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said. “Clean voter rolls are essential for there to be confidence in our elections and we commend Oklahoma for being a willing partner in that effort by producing the requested data.”
In Washington state, a separate DOJ lawsuit is in turmoil after federal lawyers failed to properly serve the defendant, ignored a court order and filed incorrect information about where the defendant lives.
For voting rights advocates, the Oklahoma settlement underscores a central concern that even as the DOJ’s legal arguments face setbacks in court, the department may still succeed in pressuring states into access to sensitive voter data.
