Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon recently sent a letter to the top election official in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and some of them did not like it.
Arizona’s secretary of state said the letter was “insulting.” Colorado’s secretary of state called it a “thinly veiled attempt” to “intimidate election officials.” Oregon’s secretary of state said he would not “be intimidated by political threats.”
What did the letter say to generate such heated reactions?
It reminded them of their obligations under federal law to ensure the integrity of their state’s election processes by enforcing laws against noncitizens registering and/or voting in federal elections — and reminding the election officers that the laws in question are serious enough to include criminal penalties, for both the noncitizens who break the law and any election official who knowingly allows them to do so.
In the letter, dated July 7, Dhillon writes that, “This letter serves as a notice of the federal laws applicable to state and local election officials to ensure free, fair, and transparent elections.” The letter includes with it a memorandum entitled, “Federal Law Requirements for State and Local Election Officials,” which “outlines various responsibilities for state and local election officials under federal law and the potential criminal penalties for those who fail to carry out their duties.”
For several paragraphs thereafter, the letter details many of the federal laws regarding state-level election integrity requirements — including, for instance, a prohibition against “knowingly retaining noncitizens on [the state’s] ‘State Voter Registration List’ (SVRL) and sending such individuals ballots, and then counting such ballots.”
The letter concludes with an offer and a request: “The Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, would like to assist your state in complying with these federal laws,” Dhillon writes, before adding, “Please respond to this letter within five days informing us how the state … intends to ensure it is complying with these federal laws both at the state and the local level and how the Department can assist in those efforts.”
Why in the world has this letter upset state officials? Why are they protesting so loudly the DOJ’s reminder that taking positive steps to ensure election integrity is a requirement of their jobs?
In the absence of any reasonable explanations, we are left to conclude that it’s clearly the latter part of the reminder — the information regarding criminal penalties for election officials who knowingly aid in the breaking of the law — that’s got them so worked up. They don’t like being told that there’s a new team at the DOJ that’s going to be enforcing federal law sternly, including against top state-level government officials.
The point of election integrity statutes isn’t to make it easier to investigate, locate, arrest, prosecute, and then incarcerate those who violate those laws after the laws have already been broken — it’s to prevent the laws from being violated in the first place.
American voters are smart. They want secure elections. They believe that the federal government should work with the state governments to secure those elections, and vice versa. That’s why, by a margin of 65% to 25% according to a survey conducted for Tea Party Patriots Action by McLaughlin & Associates, Inc., earlier this year, voters believe states should be required to verify their voter registration rolls against Department of Homeland Security records to help ensure only American citizens are registered to vote in federal elections.
The point of this exercise should be to restore confidence among the electorate that our elections are free, fair, and secure. That continues to be a problem area for us: even though confidence was on the upswing after the 2024 elections, it was still the case that only 47% of voters said they believed in early 2025 that they were very confident in the integrity of our elections.
The best way to restore confidence in the electorate that our elections are free, fair, and secure, of course, is to conduct them in a manner that ensures they are free, fair, and secure. This isn’t rocket science. In this particular circumstance, states should work with the federal government to ensure the integrity of the elections they have a responsibility to administer. They should take advantage of Dhillon’s offer of assistance, not reject it with cutting words.
Dhillon’s letter to top election officials simply reminds them they have an obligation to enforce the law, and informs them that — in service to election integrity, and efforts to restore our voters’ confidence that our elections are free, fair, and secure — violations of the law will be prosecuted, no matter who the perpetrator is. As Dhillon herself says, that’s law enforcement.
Jenny Beth Martin is chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.