States Are Drawing the Blinds on Voter Transparency—That's a Problem
As election integrity remains a pressing concern, some states are making it harder for citizens to see who's on the voter rolls
States are increasingly passing laws that make it harder for the public to check whether voter rolls are being properly maintained. The trend has accelerated as nonprofits like the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF) work to provide public access to public data through sites like VoteRef.com without the traditional barriers to entry.
Voter roll transparency is crucial to catching errors and ensuring elections are conducted in a fair manner. However, this threatens states that fail to keep their rolls clean. Rather than fix the underlying problem, many states have responded by restricting access, often through new statutes if their existing laws aren’t enough to limit access.
Besides being bad policy, this is likely a violation of federal law.
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states to make the list of registered voters available for public inspection, and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires the lists to be digitized.
Marching in the Wrong Direction
Circuit courts remain divided on whether nonprofits like VRF have standing to sue for access to voter data, and until the Supreme Court forces states to follow the NVRA to the letter, courts will likely continue to block transparency through litigation.
In Pennsylvania, election officials demanded VRF to pledge it wouldn't publish the voter roll online before granting access—with no statutory basis for the demand—prompting a lawsuit.
New Mexico’s Secretary of State called VRF's publication of state rolls illegal and referred the matter to New Mexico’s Attorney General for prosecution. In response, VRF sued and won a million-dollar settlement, which allowed VRF to continue publishing.
To make litigation against VRF and other similar nonprofits more likely to succeed, many states have enacted a flurry of new legislation to restrict or outlaw sharing voter data.
VRF Executive Director Joseph Benson told Restoration News that the trend has been almost uniformly restrictive, with only an isolated exception in Ohio.
Bills restricting access rose from four bills in four states in 2023, to 40 bills in 23 states by 2025, and to 56 bills in 24 states by 2026.
Even in Republican-led states, legislators are rushing to mask voter registration transparency.
Alabama's HB67 caps reproduction costs but limits voter roll publication—a net loss for transparency that deters legitimate research.
South Dakota's SB214 stipulates that “information obtained from the statewide voter registration file may not be placed for unrestricted access on the internet.”
Utah’s recently enacted SB0153 makes it illegal to “knowingly post on the internet or otherwise disclose to the public, for a fee or free of charge, the list of registered voters or information obtained from the list of registered voters.”
What Is Driving the Pushback?
The timing of this legislative surge is worth examining.
“Commercial data shops and political data machines have been collecting this data forever, and will continue to,” Benson said. “Why the sudden push to start restricting access for the public?”
Records obtained through a Freedom of Information request show that Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), raised VRF directly in a mass email to state election officials, on Aug. 8, 2021, asking, "Have any of you received outreach from the Voter Reference Foundation?"
The question suggests state election bureaucracies were tracking—and coordinating around—VRF's data requests.
NASED's own finances raise questions about its motivations. The organization largely served as a low-profile trade association for state election directors during the first two and a half decades of its existence. After President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, its funding more than doubled. Its only "Gold Level" corporate affiliate—the top donor tier—is the Democracy Fund, the leftist foundation created by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar.
Other major backers include for-profit voting-technology firms such as Dominion Voting Systems.
None of this proves coordination or a deliberate conspiracy against pro-election integrity nonprofits. But it raises a fair question: Is this wave of legislation a response to genuine privacy concerns, or to organizations like VRF getting too effective at showing there is a lot of room for improvement?
The explosion in state laws restricting public access to voter data over the past four years coincided with VRF’s attempt to make that data more accessible to the public by obtaining files of who is registered to vote, where, and whether they've cast a ballot. Privacy concerns don’t hold up for the restrictions, as the underlying personal information is already largely accessible. Instead, this raises questions about whether states are trying to hide the flaws within the system… or something more nefarious.
MORE ELECTION INTEGRITY NEWS:
WINNING: Victory for Free Speech: Sentence Commuted for Election Clerk Tina Peters
JACOB GRANDSTAFF: Democrats Show They Don't Really Believe in a Constitutional Republic
EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Has the Right to Voter Data—But It's Going About It the Wrong Way
DOUG TRUAX: SCOTUS Just Ended 60 Years of Affirmative Action for House Democrats
We need your help to save America—chip in today.
Restoration News, a project of Restoration of America, is your trusted investigative news source for the America First movement. As a rapidly growing conservative news site, we focus on delivering accurate and insightful exposés on political news, immigration news, leftist lies, and other pressing issues affecting everyday Americans. Our uncompromising commitment to a hard-hitting, fact-based, America First, and faithful perspective ensures that you receive news that aligns with your values.
Every dollar gets us closer to winning the war on woke
