Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar says the State of Nevada will not comply with a request from the Department of Justice for all voter records.
He says the State reached out for clarification on what the data will be used for and how it will be secured, but he has not received a clear response.
On Tuesday morning, Aguilar met with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the States United Democracy Center.
There, he said, the Justice Department's request is an abuse of federal power. More specifically, he called the request an attempt to intimidate state officials, something Nevada has seen before.
"Intimidation is a powerful tool," Secretary Aguilar said. "We know this because we've seen it during our election cycles on our poll workers, our election workers, on elected officials."
Aguilar says the State of Nevada simply cannot comply with a request for voters' personal data, including Social Security and driver's license numbers, without a clear reason, especially after a cyberattack took most of the state's systems offline in August.
"We know that people are using this information to harm our citizens and harm our voters," Secretary Aguilar said. "We cannot just give it over for any reason whatsoever. It has to be justified."
Secretary Benson agrees. She said her state will not provide private information, given recent precedent.
"There's examples of the federal government under the current president misusing or allowing others to potentially misuse the personal data of our citizens," she said.
At least 26 states have received requests from the Justice Department for all records relating to the past two presidential elections. Benson says most of those states are considering giving only publicly available information.
But a recent lawsuit complicates this plan.
The Department of Justice says it's suing Oregon and Maine for failure to provide electronic copies of registration lists and detailed voter list maintenance procedures.
It accuses Oregon and its Secretary of State Tobias Reed of violating the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. Maine and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows are also accused of violating the same laws.
In a statement announcing the lawsuits, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said, "states simply cannot pick and choose which federal laws they will comply with, including our voting laws, which ensure that all American citizens have equal access to the ballot in federal elections."
Dhillon added, "American citizens have a right to feel confident in the integrity of our electoral process, and the refusal of certain states to protect their citizens against vote dilution will result in legal consequences."
The Department of Justice has yet to issue a statement in response to Aguilar's and Benson's comments.
