Two weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice demanded Utah hand over the entirety of its voter databases, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson’s office refused to provide all of the information it has on Utah voters, instead sharing only voter registration lists that are already available to the public.
“We’ve offered the public voter list. If they want protected data, there’s a process for government entities to request it for lawful purposes,” Henderson, Utah’s top election official, said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune.
“We’ll address that if it comes,” she continued, “but so far we haven’t identified any federal or state statute that would justify handing over to the federal government the personal identifying information of 2.1 million Utah voters.”
Henderson’s office published both the initial letter from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and her answer on the lieutenant governor’s official website.
Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general with the Civil Rights Division, sent a three-page letter to Henderson on July 15 asking for a series of data points. Those included how many voters had been removed from the rolls for being inactive, noncitizens, felons or for other reasons, according to a PDF file of the letter the lieutenant governor posted.
The letter also requested the “current electronic copy of Utah’s computerized statewide voter registration list,” and asked that the office of Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor “include all fields contained within the list.”
The public file that Henderson provided, which is commonly used by political parties and candidates for public office, does not include sensitive information like Social Security numbers or dates of birth. It also did not contain the names of voters whose information is marked as private or withheld, said a spokesperson for the lieutenant governor’s office.
Gates’ letter is part of a larger effort by the Justice Department to gather broad swaths of voter data from state election officials, an initiative The Washington Post first reported on earlier this month. It also follows a report from The New York Times that Justice Department officials are exploring the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against state and local election officials if the White House determines they have not adequately safeguarded election computer systems.
“The state of Utah is in compliance with federal election law, including [the National Voter Registration Act], and has implemented safe, secure, and timely safeguards and processes for maintaining voter registration lists,” Henderson wrote in her letter to Gates Thursday.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson speaks during an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune in her office at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024.
As part of her response, Henderson said four noncitizens had been identified in Utah’s voter database over the span of two years, and that all four had been removed from voter rolls. Of the four noncitizens identified, three were on Salt Lake County voter rolls, and one was on Utah County rolls — the state’s two most populous counties.
Between Dec. 1, 2022, and Nov. 30, 2024, according to Henderson’s letter, 109,436 voters were removed from Utah’s voter registry.
In Gates’ original request, he wrote that Utah has “the lowest rate in the nation for voter registration records removed from the voter registration rolls,” citing a survey of counties that only four of the state’s 29 counties responded to.
“Utah remains one of the most proactive states for maintaining current and accurate voter registration rolls,” Henderson replied. “The … conclusion that ‘Utah has the lowest rate in the nation for voter registration records removed from the voter registration rolls’ is based on incomplete data and therefore inaccurate.”
States across the country have reportedly received similar letters seeking voter information. Some states, like Maine, have refused to comply with the President Donald Trump administration.
“The Gulf of Maine is awfully cold, but maybe that’s what the DOJ needs to cool down,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said. “So, here’s my answer to Trump’s DOJ today: go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”
Henderson’s response was decidedly more diplomatic.
“As for your request for the statewide voter registration database, attached is the most current version of the public statewide voter registration list,” she wrote. Other questions about the statewide voter registration system, she added, could be directed to the state’s director of elections, Ryan Cowley.
Last month, former Rep. Phil Lyman, who lost his gubernatorial challenge to Gov. Spencer Cox and Henderson, sued the lieutenant governor, making similar demands to Gates. Lyman had the backing of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a national conservative organization that has made claims of widespread election fraud.
The group’s founder was an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President George W. Bush, and in 2017 was appointed to Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
Ahead of last year’s election, Henderson told The Tribune that she would not endorse a candidate in the presidential race, while criticizing members of her party who spread misinformation about election integrity.
“I have a real struggle with people who do know better and should know better at the top of Republican politics, who are sowing doubt and chaos and confusion for political gain — no matter who it is,” Henderson said, when asked whether she would make an endorsement. “And yeah, it’s been starting at the top, but it’s also trickling down through the ranks, and anybody who participates in that is not doing their country any service.”
During a brief appearance in South Ogden earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, Utah’s only member of congressional leadership, said he deferred to Henderson on whether Utah should hand over voter data to the Justice Department. Asked whether he believed there was voter fraud happening in Utah, Moore said, “Utah has always done a great job.”
Sen. Mike Lee, who serves as Utah’s senior federal delegate, has made the issue of noncitizen voting a legislative priority in the U.S. Senate, where he is sponsoring the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, more commonly known as the SAVE Act.
The bill would require that voters produce evidence of citizenship in order to register to vote, a proposal that furthers conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud among noncitizens in the U.S., and which voting rights experts say would make it harder for many citizens to vote.