The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to election officials in at least two key swing states, threatening action against the states if they don’t comply with provisions of a 2002 federal election law.

Lawyers from the department’s civil rights division sent letters in recent weeks to both Arizona and Wisconsin. The Arizona letter said that state officials are not properly verifying voters’ identities as dictated by the Help America Vote Act, and it warned of a lawsuit. The Wisconsin letter said the Wisconsin Elections Commission is not properly resolving administrative complaints as required by the same law and threatened to withhold federal election funds over that issue.

The Justice Department recently sued North Carolina also, claiming that the state has not been properly verifying voter identity.

The department issued a press release and publicly released the Wisconsin letter, dated June 4; Votebeat obtained the previously unreported Arizona letter, dated May 20, through a records request.

The letters are an early sign of how President Donald Trump’s administration is scrutinizing state election practices after his March executive order on elections, which called for stricter citizenship checks and revised voting machine standards, among other things. The Justice Department has also dropped or withdrawn from several voting rights cases dating from before Trump took office again in January.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, responded in a June 2 letter to the Justice Department that state election officials conduct a complete residency and citizenship check and fully comply with the Help America Vote Act when someone registers to vote. 

“Arizona has a long history of adherence to voter registration requirements, both state and federal,” Fontes wrote.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission declined to immediately comment on the letter that it received, which noted that the commission has declined to adjudicate administrative complaints against itself since at least 2022, due in part to a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision.

The letter said the commission’s actions “justify a bar” on future grants to the state from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. 

The DOJ appears to be raising a “legitimate” violation in that case, David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former attorney in the voting section of the Justice Department, said after reviewing the letter. But he characterized it as minor and stressed that the agency has limited resources to devote to enforcing voting laws.

The DOJ didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about the letters.

How Wisconsin Elections Commission handles conflict of interest

Under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), any state receiving money for elections must also establish an administrative process allowing people to file complaints about alleged violations of the law. If the state determines there’s a HAVA violation, it must provide an appropriate remedy, the law says; if not, it can dismiss the complaint.

But in recent years, the WEC has been summarily dismissing HAVA complaints that are about the agency’s own actions. 

In rejecting those complaints, the commission cited a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion in which Justice Rebecca Bradley, a conservative, said it would be “nonsensical” for the Wisconsin Elections Commission to adjudicate a complaint against itself. Bradley was joined in her opinion by two other justices, and a fourth justice echoed her in a separate opinion in the case.

Becker said that WEC practice probably doesn’t comply with the federal law, which supersedes state laws, especially for federal elections.

While the election commission said it would be a conflict of interest to adjudicate complaints against itself, Becker said other agencies “do investigations of themselves all the time.”

Because of the WEC’s position, complainants are left “without any recourse,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote in the letter. The commission’s actions jeopardize future federal funding, she wrote.

But in at least some cases, the agency has told complainants they can appeal a WEC ruling in court, Rob Yablon, a law professor at UW-Madison, pointed out. Yablon also said it’s unclear whether WEC’s position that it can’t resolve the complaints could itself count as a determination that meets the requirements in HAVA. 

Right now, Wisconsin doesn’t stand to lose much in federal funding over the issue. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission allocated about $272,000 in election security grants to Wisconsin in the 2025 fiscal year, money that has yet to come in, according to WEC Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat.

“The commission would have to decide to take it. We would have to know the conditions of receiving it,” Jacobs said, adding that she questioned “whether or not the work that would be involved in (administering the grants) would justify the receipt of the money when … it would amount to $147.03 per clerk.”

It would take a majority vote of the commissioners for the WEC to begin adjudicating claims against itself, Jacobs said, but she wouldn’t be in favor of it.

“I think our legal analysis is correct: It’s improper for us to be the adjudicating body on whether or not we did something wrong,” she said. “I think that we can have both statutes, both federal and state law, harmoniously work together. And I think that is, in fact, what’s going on.”

WEC member Don Millis, a Republican, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Following the DOJ letter, Republicans in charge of the state’s budget committee delayed a planned session to finalize the election commission’s budget, saying they had to review the Justice Department’s allegations first.

Arizona’s ID number checks are at issue

In both the North Carolina lawsuit and the Arizona letter, the DOJ asserted that the states have failed to require applicants’ driver’s license numbers when they register to vote.

North Carolina has since fixed its form to require this information, but it hasn’t contacted every voter who registered through the faulty registration form to provide the missing information. The issue of missing identification numbers was central to the recent challenge to results of the state’s Supreme Court race.

In the letter to Arizona’s secretary of state, Maureen Riordan, senior counsel and acting chief of the voting section of the civil rights division, wrote that HAVA requires the state to request the applicant’s driver’s license number if the applicant has one. If not, a Social Security number is acceptable, she wrote.

The DOJ claims Arizona improperly allows registrants to use either ID number, regardless of whether the applicant has a driver’s license.

The division asked the state to revise the form and retroactively check all applicants who provided only a Social Security number “to identify any non-citizens.”

Fontes in his response explained that since 2005, Arizona has required voters who register to vote in state and local elections to provide evidence of citizenship and has designed its form to meet that requirement as well as HAVA requirements.

When someone applies, an election official completes what the state calls a “HAVA check” using the state’s driver’s license database to check the driver’s license data, as well as to confirm citizenship, he said. 

“Our system and processes ensure that if those individuals have MVD credentials, the number of such credential is included in their voter record,” he wrote.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Fifield at jfifield@votebeat.org.

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