Civil Discourse – Protecting The Right To Vote – Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Protecting The Right To Vote

By Joyce Vance, Sep 09, 2025

On August 18, I wrote to you about Trump’s “Truth”—his social media post—about voting. It was a screed that pulled in all of the debunked threads he’s used over time to support his completely unsubstantiated claim about massive fraud in American elections. In his post, he complained about mail-in ballots, voting machines, and cheating Democrats. He moved on to open borders and men playing women’s sports, neither of which has anything to do with elections, but he was on a roll at that point.

Midway through, he came out with something new and truly alarming. He wrote that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY.”

In January 2024 he began floating that idea that “illegal aliens” were voting in large numbers, an idea that defies logic—few people would endure the trauma of entering this country without legal status, desperate to start a new life, only to throw it away by trying to vote in a situation where they would be sure to be found out and have no chance of impacting the outcome of the election. But for Trump, this isn’t about logic. It’s about riling up the base. And now, it’s about something more.

Republicans have long dreamed of compiling national data. It can be used to try and intimidate voters or persuade them not to vote. They can be targeted with information, plans that are even more frightening in the era of AI. But most of all, it’s the idea of “caging,” of using the information to try and disqualify voters. We know how that works with Trump. It doesn’t matter if there’s any truth to his allegations. As he did with false claims of fraud in 2020 or claims in the run-up to 2024 (they suspiciously went away as soon as he won) about noncitizens voting, prepare yourself for claims in 2026 about all sorts of ineligible people voting. And worst of all, it’s the Justice Department putting that information together. Not rogue political operatives.

The work is being done in two DOJ components, the Civil Rights Division, which used to protect voters’ rights, and the Criminal Division, which used to prosecute people who violated them. The Justice Department has requested, and will presumably receive, voter data from at least 16 Republican-controlled states, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. It also sent demands for data to at least 17 mostly Democrat-controlled or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, and New York. We spoke with Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, the week she received one and told the White House to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”

What kind of information about you is the administration trying to get? According to the Times, they want “personally identifiable information on voters like driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers.” In a lawsuit in South Carolina, a judge has blocked the release, at least for now. That kind of information could let Republicans make untrue claims based on partial or misinterpreted information about where a voter’s primary residence is, for instance, and use that to drive half-baked claims of voter fraud. It’s dangerous because it would have the imprimatur of the Justice Department, something Trump tried but failed to get for his fake election fraud claims in 2020.

Trump operated during the last election and continues to operate in a vacuum where he fails to acknowledge that it’s already a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in a presidential election, prohibited by Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 611. In January 2024 he began floating that idea that “illegal aliens” were voting in large numbers, an idea that defies logic—few people would endure the trauma of entering this country without legal status, desperate to start a new life, only to throw it away by trying to vote in a situation where they would be sure to be found out and have no chance of impacting the outcome of the election. But for Trump, this isn’t about logic. It’s about riling up the base. And now, it’s about something more.

Republicans have long dreamed of compiling national data. It can be used to try and intimidate voters or persuade them not to vote. They can be targeted with information, plans that are even more frightening in the era of AI. But most of all, it’s the idea of “caging,” of using the information to try and disqualify voters. We know how that works with Trump. It doesn’t matter if there’s any truth to his allegations. As he did with false claims of fraud in 2020 or claims in the run-up to 2024 (they suspiciously went away as soon as he won) about noncitizens voting, prepare yourself for claims in 2026 about all sorts of ineligible people voting. And worst of all, it’s the Justice Department putting that information together. Not rogue political operatives.

The work is being done in two DOJ components, the Civil Rights Division, which used to protect voters’ rights, and the Criminal Division, which used to prosecute people who violated them. The Justice Department has requested, and will presumably receive, voter data from at least 16 Republican-controlled states, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. It also sent demands for data to at least 17 mostly Democrat-controlled or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, and New York. We spoke with Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, the week she received one and told the White House to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”

What kind of information about you is the administration trying to get? According to the Times, they want “personally identifiable information on voters like driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers.” In a lawsuit in South Carolina, a judge has blocked the release, at least for now. That kind of information could let Republicans make untrue claims based on partial or misinterpreted information about where a voter’s primary residence is, for instance, and use that to drive half-baked claims of voter fraud. It’s dangerous because it would have the imprimatur of the Justice Department, something Trump tried but failed to get for his fake election fraud claims in 2020.

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