Idaho secretary of state won’t give feds sensitive voter information

Kyle Pfannenstiel

(Idaho Capital Sun) Idaho’s top election official recently said he will not give the Trump administration access to sensitive personal information about 1 million Idaho registered voters.

In a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice last week, Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane turned down the Justice Department’s offer for a deal to share the information, which would include Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and birth dates.

The move to decline sharing Idaho’s full voter roll comes as the Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states for refusing its demands. In December, a Justice Department attorney hinted that the federal government could sue Idaho for not complying, public records that the Idaho Capital Sun obtained showed.

McGrane wrote in his letter that the Justice Department had recently revealed in a separate federal lawsuit filing that sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, were shared from federal systems “to unauthorized persons.”

“That development reinforces the importance of careful stewardship of sensitive voter information. While I appreciate the Department’s representation that Idaho’s data will be safeguarded, I cannot take that now-apparent risk in the absence of clear legal duty to do so. Ultimately, my concern is for the privacy rights of Idahoans who have registered to vote, as secured under Idaho law,” McGrane wrote to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section Acting Chief Eric Neff in a Feb. 26 letter.

The letter didn’t specify how that data was shared. But in January, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing that employees of the federal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, shared Social Security data on an unsecured thirty-party server, the New York Times reported.

A U.S. Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on McGrane’s letter.

In a statement, Idaho Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson Joe Parris said “Idaho law clearly protects the release of private voter information. We have full confidence in the integrity and accuracy of Idaho voter rolls through consistent voter information confirmation and will continue to ensure only American citizens are voting in the 2026 election.”