What possible use does the United States Department of Justice have for my driver’s license number? Or yours?
If you voted in Wyoming in the last election, the feds already have it, along with your full name, home address, date of birth, and the last four digits of your Social Security number.
So how did the Feds get their hands on Wyoming voters’ personal information?
On June 25, 2025, the Acting Chief of the Civil Rights Division at DOJ sent Wyoming Secretary of State, Chuck Gray, a list of fifteen questions about election security. Fair enough on the surface.
The questions covered routine topics: how Wyoming processes voter applications, assigns identifiers, removes duplicates, and clears deceased voters from the rolls.
Then came Question 15: “Please send us Wyoming’s current statewide voter registration list. Please include both active and inactive voters.”
Send us the name, address, drivers license number and last 4 digits of Social Security number on everyone who voted. Wow!
Open government advocate George Powers uncovered the details in Wyoming through a public records request. What he found raises a lot of questions.
On July 24, 2025, Secretary Gray responded to the DOJ with a fifteen-page, single-spaced explanation of Wyoming’s election system. The very next day, redacted voter data was transmitted to the DOJ.
The DOJ wasn’t satisfied.
They specifically requested full names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. They cited the Help America Vote Act, the Civil Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act as justification.
Here’s the problem.
Wyoming law says exactly the opposite.
Wyoming Statute 22-2-113 is crystal clear: “Election records containing social security numbers, portions of social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers, tribal identification card numbers, e-mail addresses and other personally identifiable information… are not public records and shall be kept confidential.”
Confidential.
Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia hit the brakes. They raised privacy concerns. They hesitated.
Wyoming didn’t.
Wyoming was first in line to hand it over on August 28, 2025.
Federal law trumped state law.
The DOJ sued the states that refused to comply.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dillon explained it this way: “States simply cannot pick and choose which federal laws they will comply with, including our voting laws, which ensure all American citizen have equal access to the ballot in federal elections.”
That sounds principled.
Until you start asking the obvious questions. Why does the DOJ need this data? Who gets access to it? Where does it go? And how long does it live?
The answers? Murky at best.
Federal courts in California, Michigan, and Oregon dismissed federal the lawsuits, ruling that the requests would trample states’ constitutional role as the primary administrators of elections. The federal government lacks the legal authority to compile a national voter file.
In a March 26, 2026, article reporting on court arguments in the Maine Morning Star, Maine Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Bolton argued in court that the real goal is building a national voter database—and no one knows what the government intends to do with it.
Sejal Jhaveri, speaking for the Campaign Legal Center and the League of Women Voters, put it bluntly: “There’s been shifting explanations… of both why they need this information and how they’re going to use the information. And that should raise concern for all Americans, especially when we’re thinking about sensitive voter data.”
Shifting explanations. Sensitive data. Federal collection.
That’s not a comforting combination.
The DOJ’s response? They don’t have to explain.
Thomas Tucker, arguing for the USDOJ said the agency did not need to provide detailed justification for requesting sensitive voter data because the Civil Rights Act of 1960 gave the federal government authority to request the voter registration records in order to ensure compliance.
Trust us, they say.
History suggests that’s a risky bet.
Because here’s where it gets worse.
The DOJ is sharing voter roll data with the Department of Homeland Security. The stated purpose is to “scrub” non-citizens from voter rolls.
And since May 2025, the federal government has also been cross-referencing Social Security data to verify voter eligibility.
So let’s tally this up.
If you voted in Wyoming, your personal information now lives in a massive federal database which is shared across agencies, combined with other datasets, and stored who-knows-where in the cloud.
Forever. Because databases don’t forget.
Imagine what happens when that database gets hacked by criminals, by hostile nations, or by someone who simply shouldn’t have access.
Identity theft would be the least of our worries when we are all part of nationalized database of voters.
We’re told this is about election integrity.
Maybe it is.
But we have to admit it is a little creepy that the price to vote is to have your name compiled with every other voter in some massive faceless federal database.
Don’t get me started on license plate readers popping up all over Wyoming tracking everywhere you drive.
George Orwell would be appalled.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
