California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom departs after speaking about the Election Rigging Response Act at a news conference earlier this month in Los Angeles. California Democrats promised to retaliate if Texas gerrymanders its congressional map, and approved a new map that will go before voters in November. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

When California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his plan to retaliate if Republican-led Texas redrew its congressional districts to favor the GOP, he affirmed his support for less partisan maps — and then promised to “meet fire with fire.”

“We’re doing it mindful that we want to model better behavior,” Newsom told reporters in Los Angeles earlier this month, nodding to the independent system his state currently uses to draw districts. “ … But we cannot unilaterally disarm. We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear.”

President Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to redraw U.S. House districts so the party can win more seats in the 2026 midterm elections — to gerrymander them — has triggered a redistricting frenzy this summer that also threatens to prompt moves by Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and New York, among others. Ohio was already set to redraw its lines, even before the current fracas.

The battle for partisan advantage is placing Democratic politicians, advocates of less partisan maps and others who support curbs on gerrymandering in an uncomfortable position, pitting their desire for change against fears that Trump will take advantage of their scruples to wring more GOP seats out of a handful of key states. Some say they accept that Democratic states need to respond, while others warn retaliation will only yield short-term gains.

The Texas House passed a new map on Wednesday, clearing the way for a final vote in the state Senate and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature. In California, lawmakers passed their own map on Thursday, setting up a statewide vote in November over the new districts.

Other states are now likely to follow, as Republicans and Democrats scramble for a political leg up.

But gerrymandering opponents say the current moment has the potential to produce new energy for their movement. More people are paying attention to gerrymandering, they say, and new polls show the public opposes the practice. The rush to redraw maps demonstrates the need for Congress to set national limits, they say.

“I think that the gerrymandering wildfire that we’re seeing across the country right now calls real attention to the urgent need for a national standard,” said David Daley, an author of books on gerrymandering and a senior fellow at FairVote, a Maryland-based nonpartisan group that supports ranked choice voting and multimember House districts to end the practice. “We will never have reform if a handful of states can act on their own.”

At the same time, some gerrymandering opponents fear states will unravel hard-fought victories. They wonder whether temporary measures, such as California potentially setting aside the independent commission it uses to redraw maps, could become permanent.

‘An unprecedented time’

State legislatures exercise primary control over congressional redistricting in 39 states, according to All About Redistricting, a compendium of information on map-drawing hosted by Loyola Law School in California. While some states use other methods, only nine states rely on independent commissions, which typically limit participation by elected officials and are favored by many gerrymandering opponents.

Most states draw maps once a decade after the census, making the mid-decade maneuvers and counter-maneuvers highly unusual (six states currently have only one representative, eliminating the need to draw district lines). But just a few seats could determine who controls the U.S. House. Republicans currently hold 219 seats to Democrats’ 212, with four vacancies.

“We affirm that gerrymandering, both racial and political, disenfranchises voters,” Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, an organization that has long advocated for changes to the redistricting process, said during a press call the day before Newsom’s announcement.

“But this is an unprecedented time of political upheaval,” she said. People don’t want to see a situation develop where maps are redrawn every two years, she added.

The new Texas map could ease the path for Republicans to win an additional five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas lawmakers rapidly advanced the redraw this week once Democratic state lawmakers returned to the state. They had traveled to other states to deny Texas House leaders the quorum required to approve the map, but returned after Newsom outlined California’s response.

Gerrymandering typically involves “packing” and “cracking.” “Packing” refers to the concentration of opposition party voters in a small number of districts to reduce competition elsewhere. “Cracking” means diluting the voting power of the opposing party’s supporters across many districts.

Texas Republicans have been frank that they are pursuing the redraw for partisan advantage. But they emphasize that no prohibition exists, in Texas or nationally, against mid-decade redistricting and that a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision cleared the way for states to draw maps for partisan purposes, removing the power of federal courts to police political gerrymandering.

The new maps give Republicans a chance of winning additional districts but doesn’t guarantee victories, they add.

“The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance,” Texas state Rep. Todd Hunter, a Republican who carried the bill in the Texas House, said during floor debate on Wednesday. He added a short time later: “According to the U.S. Supreme Court, you can use political performance, and that is what we’ve done.”

Tricky terrain

As Texas moves forward and California prepares to respond, Common Cause illustrates the tricky terrain anti-gerrymandering advocates are now navigating.

The group, headquartered in Washington, D.C., fought to enact the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2008. But earlier this month, Common Cause declined to condemn California’s retaliation, saying it will judge the effort by whether the maps are a proportional response to gerrymanders in other states, whether the process includes meaningful public participation, and whether the maps expire and are replaced after the 2030 census through the state’s regular redistricting process, among other criteria.

Newsom’s proposal, the Election Rigging Response Act, will ask California voters in November to temporarily set aside the state’s redistricting commission and approve the new map drawn by the legislature. The commission would resume drawing maps following the census.

Recent polling shows widespread public opposition to gerrymandering. A YouGov poll of 1,116 Americans conducted in early August found 69% believe it should be illegal to draw districts in a way that makes it harder for members of a particular political party to elect their preferred candidates. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The number of Americans who say gerrymandering is a big problem has jumped in recent years. In the YouGov poll, 75% of respondents said it is a major problem when districts are intentionally drawn to favor one party, up from 66% in a 2022 survey.

Some California Republicans have responded to Newsom’s proposal by defending the commission system. A group of Republicans sued in state court to block the plan, but the California Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request to temporarily halt the effort.

‘Is this bad for reform?’

While members of the public might say they favor citizen-led commissions, they may not care deeply about the issue, said David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College who has written on polarization in American politics. He called gerrymandering a “classic process subject” that comes off as “inside baseball” to many people.

“The legislators in states that haven’t adopted commissions clearly don’t feel any particular political pressure to do so,” Hopkins said.

Some Republicans in states weighing a mid-decade gerrymander also discount the risk of a public backlash.

In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe may call a special session this fall to redraw the state’s map in hopes of gaining an additional GOP seat in the U.S. House. James Harris, a Missouri Republican consultant with close ties to GOP officials in the state, said he wasn’t concerned redistricting would create momentum to change the process.

Missouri voters in recent years have approved ballot measures favored by Democrats, including one in 2018 that empowered a nonpartisan demographer to draw state legislative districts, though not congressional districts. But Republicans led a successful campaign to convince voters to repeal the changes two years later.

Harris painted any new potential map as part of a national effort to help Trump — who received 58.5% of the vote in Missouri last November.

“I think the lens is wanting to make sure the president has a majority in Congress so he can actually govern for the last two years versus two years of investigations, gridlock,” Harris said.

Advocates of less partisan maps said lawmakers aren’t likely to surrender their own role in mapmaking. While some state courts may limit redistricting excesses, federal courts stopped policing partisan gerrymandering following the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision. And the high court may soon weaken the judiciary’s power to block race-based gerrymandering.

Samuel Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which supports eliminating partisan gerrymandering, said the “one good thing” about the redistricting battle is that it’s prompted voters to pay attention to an arcane and technical issue. That could be a positive in the long run, he said, “if people can keep a cool head.”

Wang has written online that any response to Texas should remain measured and proportionate. California offers Democrats the only clean option to strike back, Wang wrote. Five Democratic seats could be added by redrawing the state.

“Is this bad for reform? I mean, I’m torn,” Wang told Stateline. “Because on the other hand, Democrats have been, over the last few decades, vocal in their advocacy for voting rights in various forms and now that advocacy is in question because they find a need to fight fire with fire.”

“So I guess the way I would characterize it is if they can hold it in check and not do it in every single state and just engage in whatever they’re doing where it will make a difference,” he said, “then we might not lose all the progress that’s been made.”

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hold hands during a roundtable event at the Hill Country Youth Event Center in Kerrville, Texas, on July 11, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s push to bolster the GOP’s narrow congressional majority in next year’s elections has prompted a rare nationwide mid-decade redistricting battle that has rapidly taken shape over the past weeks. 

Indiana GOP lawmakers’ White House visit this week highlights how the race to redraw congressional districts for partisan advantage may soon expand beyond Texas and California — two states that have reached new stages in their dueling redistricting efforts. Missouri could also be on its way to redrawing its map to favor Republicans.

“Drawing districts to put your thumb on the scale is almost as old as the country,” said David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati who conducts research on gerrymandering, elections and voting rights.

“The revolutionary twist is: Almost all of the history of gerrymandering has been about personal gain and about advancing your friends’ interests — this is a real dramatic turn toward using gerrymandering for national political control.”

The national scuffle originated with Trump urging Texas to draw a new congressional map to defend the GOP’s razor-thin control of the U.S. House. The map could give Republicans five new congressional seats in the 2026 midterms.

The GOP has 219 U.S. House seats, with Democrats holding 212 spots and four current vacancies — a slim margin that has created hurdles for U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, as he tries to enact Trump’s agenda and cater to both the demands of the president and the GOP conference’s factions. 

As Republicans in the Hoosier State face mounting pressure to join in on the redistricting fight, Indiana GOP state lawmakers are headed to the White House on Tuesday.

The meeting was scheduled before Vice President JD Vance’s Aug. 7 meeting with Indiana GOP leadership as part of the administration’s redistricting push but after redistricting was added to Texas’ special legislative session agenda in July, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. 

As of last week, Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun remained noncommittal about whether he would call a special session to redraw the state’s lines, per the Capital Chronicle. 

California, Texas redistricting battle heats up 

The Indiana lawmakers’ visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. comes as Lone Star State Republicans inch closer to adopting a new congressional map and California Democrats fight back with their own effort. 

The Texas Senate on Saturday approved the new map, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would “swiftly” sign into law.

Texas lawmakers approved the new congressional map after two weeks of delays following widespread opposition from Texas’ Democratic legislators. 

But the Golden State is ramping up its retaliatory efforts against Texas Republicans.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a legislative package Aug. 21 that calls for a special election, in which voters will decide the fate of a new congressional map that could give Democrats five more seats in the U.S. House. 

Newsom has framed the effort as pushing back against political hardball by Trump. 

“We got here because the president of the United States is struggling,” Newsom said shortly before signing the legislative package. 

“We got here because the president of the United States is one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history. We got here because he recognizes that he will lose the election. Congress will go back into the hands of the Democratic Party next November. We got here because of his failed policies,” he said. 

The California governor added that Texas “fired the first shot.”

“We wouldn’t be here if Texas had not done what they just did, Donald Trump didn’t do what he just did.” 

Meanwhile, Trump said Monday that the Department of Justice will file a lawsuit over Newsom’s redistricting efforts.

More states could follow 

Missouri could also soon follow in Texas’ redistricting footsteps to give the GOP more of an advantage in the upcoming midterms. 

Trump took to social media Aug. 21 saying “the Great State of Missouri is now IN,” adding that “we’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”

The administration has put pressure on Missouri in recent weeks to redraw their lines to help defend Republicans’ majority in the U.S. House by eliminating one of two Democratic districts in the state.

Though Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe said no decisions about calling a special legislative session had been made, a spokesperson for the Republican said he “continues to have conversations with House and Senate leadership to assess options for a special session that would allow the General Assembly to provide congressional districts that best represent Missourians,” according to the Missouri Independent.

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said Sunday he is considering redistricting efforts in the state, where the GOP currently holds just one of eight congressional seats. 

“I want to make sure that we have fair lines and fair seats, where we don’t have situations where politicians are choosing voters, but that voters actually have a chance to choose their elected officials,” Moore told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” 

“We need to be able to have fair maps, and we also need to make sure that if the president of the United States is putting his finger on the scale to try to manipulate elections because he knows that his policies cannot win in a ballot box, then it behooves each and every one of us to be able to keep all options on the table to ensure that the voters’ voices can actually be heard, and we can have maps.”

Gov. Tony Evers speaks at a press conference about his budget proposal for the Department of Corrections. Evers vetoed a bill that would have deprived Wisconsinites who finished serving their time for felonies of voting rights if they hadn't paid all their court fees and other obligations.. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

Gov. Tony Evers recently vetoed a Republican-sponsored bill, AB87/SB95, that would have suspended the right to vote for Wisconsinites convicted of a felony who have served their sentence until they fulfill outstanding court-order obligations, such as fines, costs, restitution or community service.

In Wisconsin, people who have served their criminal sentence for a felony, including incarceration and community service, parole, probation and extended supervision, are eligible to vote.

But the proposed legislation would have required any outstanding requirements – “fines, costs, fees, surcharges, and restitution [and] any court-ordered community service, imposed in connection with the crime” – to be addressed in full before voting rights were fully restored.

State Rep. Shae Sortwell, (R-Two Rivers) a sponsor of the bill, offered support in writing at the March 4, 2025 Assembly public hearing, saying the bill would “ensure justice is entirely served and full accountability is given to those that still owe a debt to their victims, especially those that are trafficked.” (The legislation also required restitution for victims of human trafficking as a condition.)

State Sen. Dan Feyen, (R- Fond Du Lac), a co-sponsor of the bill, said he supported the legislation “to make sure crime victims are justly compensated and the perpetrators of these crimes are held accountable for their action.”

However, in vetoing the proposed legislation, Evers said, “This bill would create additional barriers to make it harder for individuals who have completed their sentences to have their right to vote restored. My promise to Wisconsinites has always been that I will not sign legislation that makes it harder for eligible Wisconsinites to cast their ballot. I will continue to keep that promise.”

Mark Rice, Wisconsin transformational justice campaign coordinator at WISDOM, a faith-based organization that works to advance the rights of immigrants and formerly incarcerated people, said the issue is personal to him because he had his voting rights removed when he was sentenced for a felony.

“I couldn’t vote for several years after serving my prison sentence,” he said.

For those coming out of prison, said Rice, it is often difficult to secure employment and have the funds to pay off outstanding fees and restitution, and he doesn’t believe those struggling to integrate into society should face yet another obstacle to participate in civic life.

“We here at WISDOM have been organizing to expand voting rights for formerly incarcerated people for many years, and we thank Gov. Evers for vetoing a bill that would have amounted to voter suppression,” said Rice.

Marianne Oleson, operations director for Ex-incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) of Wisconsin, also celebrated Evers’ veto.

“Governor Evers’ veto is a tremendous victory for EXPO, for the people we serve, and for democracy in Wisconsin,” Oleson said in a statement. “This bill would have imposed a modern-day poll tax, silencing thousands of Wisconsinites who have already completed their sentences simply because they could not afford to pay court costs or restitution.”

She added, “At EXPO, we believe the right to vote should never depend on the size of your bank account. Justice means restoring full citizenship and dignity to those who have paid their debt to society — not creating new barriers that keep them from participating in our democracy.”

The ACLU of Wisconsin has opposed the legislation since the March 4, 2025 public hearing.

“This proposal would create a modern-day poll tax in Wisconsin,” said the ACLU, and compared  the proposed legislation to a controversial Florida bill, SB 7066, that passed in 2019, which required “outstanding legal obligations” to be met before even allowing ex-felons the ability to register to vote.

The ACLU also warned that the state does not have a “centralized database” to accurately identify all outstanding obligations that would have to be met before voting is regained.

“This would make it nearly impossible for some individuals to determine what they owe, if anything, and whether they would be eligible to vote,” an  ACLU spokesperson said..

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause of Wisconsin, an organization supporting open and responsive government, also supported Evers’ veto.

“This measure had as its goal to make it more difficult for long marginalized communities in Wisconsin who are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, as well as people living in poverty and those with disabilities, to be able to exercise their right to vote,” Heck said in a statement.

He added, “This legislation didn’t make whole people who have survived crime; it just would have weakened democracy and put the right to vote out of reach through a poll tax – an outrageous and deeply unfair price tag on the freedom to vote.”

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A voter casts an early ballot at a polling station in Milwaukee in 2023. Wisconsin is among at least nine states that have received requests from the U.S. Department of Justice for voter information, raising concerns among election officials about how the Trump administration will use the data. (Photo by Morry Gash/The Associated Press)

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking the voter registration lists of several states — representing data on millions of Americans — and other election information ahead of the 2026 midterms, raising fears about how the Trump administration plans to use the information.

The DOJ is also demanding Colorado turn over all records related to the 2024 election, a massive trove of documents that could include ballots and even voting equipment. The Colorado inquiry, the most sweeping publicly known request, underscores the extent of the administration’s attention on state election activities.

At least nine states have received requests for information over the past three months, according to letters from the DOJ obtained by Stateline. Some states also received emails from a DOJ official last week asking for meetings to discuss information-sharing agreements.

The department’s focus on elections comes after President Donald Trump directed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in March to seek information about suspected election crimes from state election officials and empowered her to potentially withhold grants and other funds from uncooperative states.

For years, Trump has advanced false claims about elections, including the idea that the 2020 election that he lost was stolen. Now back in power, his administration is taking a new level of interest in how states — and even local authorities — administer elections.

Last week, a political operative approached several Republican county clerks in Colorado to enlist them in election integrity efforts in light of Trump’s sweeping March executive order overhauling elections administration. One clerk told Stateline the operative claimed to represent the White House.

“Whatever the Trump administration tries to pull is very unlikely to be successful,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said in an interview, calling Colorado elections very secure. “With that said, do I think they are trying to undermine our elections at large in this country? Absolutely.”

DOJ has sent letters to Alaska, Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, in addition to the request to Colorado.

The letters have typically asked election officials to describe how they register voters and work to identify duplicate registrations and individuals not eligible to vote, such as people with felony convictions and those who have died. The Washington Post earlier Wednesday reported on the letters; Votebeat and NPR previously reported on some of the letters as well.

Most letters also ask about each state’s process for flagging noncitizen applicants. Noncitizen voting is against federal law and incredibly rare, but Trump and his allies have promoted false claims about its prevalence. The Trump administration is also conducting a general crackdown on illegal immigration.

The letters call on election officials to turn over voter registration lists, which in some instances contain data on millions of residents in their states. This request has raised the most concerns, with some experts saying it’s unclear exactly why the DOJ wants the information.

“They don’t make much sense as law enforcement investigations. That makes me think that there’s some other purpose,” said Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University.

Trump’s proof of citizenship elections order blocked for now in federal court

While many states make their voter registration lists available to the public, Levitt emphasized the data could still be largely off-limits to the federal government. Federal privacy law sometimes restricts how the government can use data that’s publicly obtainable. The DOJ may need voter information in some individual circumstances, but “that’s not blanket permission to go vacuuming up data.”

The DOJ didn’t respond to questions for this story.

Federal laws restrict the federal government’s ability to centralize information on Americans, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. Even if states provide voter registration information to the public, they often redact sensitive information.

In Orange County, California, the DOJ sued local election officials in June, seeking unredacted voter registration information, such as Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, as part of an investigation into noncitizen voting.

More than 350 election officials from some 33 states participated in a conference call about federal actions on Monday hosted by Becker, who was previously an attorney in the DOJ Voting Rights Section during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He said the interest in the call shows the level of uncertainty and anxiety over the current “federal imposition” on election administrators.

“The DOJ seems dead set on acquiring personal information on voters, including driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers and dates of birth — records that are highly protected under federal law and under state law and which state election officials are sworn to protect,” Becker said.

Sweeping Colorado requests

In Colorado, the amount of data the DOJ wants is enormous. On May 12, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant U.S. attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, sent a letter to Griswold, the secretary of state, asking for access to “all records” related to the 2024 election.

Federal law requires state election officials to preserve records related to elections for 22 months. Typically, the rule ensures records are preserved in case any lawsuits are filed over an election. In the letter, Dhillon referred to a complaint against Griswold’s office alleging noncompliance with records retention laws, but provided no details.

Experts on election administration who spoke to Stateline expressed shock at the scope of the demand to Colorado. The request encompasses a vast trove of material, potentially including ballots.

“The amount of records being requested from a place like Colorado … it’s really, really significant in terms of the volume of materials that are required to be retained,” said Neal Ubriani, a former voting rights litigator at the DOJ during the Obama and first Trump administrations and the current policy and research director at the nonpartisan Institute for Responsive Government.

Colorado elections have previously drawn Trump’s attention. Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a staunch Trump supporter, is serving a nine-year prison sentence after a conviction in state court for allowing unauthorized access to voting equipment in 2021.

On May 5 of this year — a week before the Dhillon letter to Griswold — Trump posted on social media that Peters should be released, calling her a “political prisoner.” Griswold noted the timing.

“I think the bigger picture is Donald Trump is continuing to try and rewrite the 2020 election and destabilize the ’26 and ’28 elections,” Griswold told Stateline.

Trump signs broad elections order requiring proof of citizenship

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office responded to the DOJ by providing copies of the state’s master voter file and voter history file. All of the information provided is also available to the public.

Some Colorado Republican county clerks in recent days have also been approached by Jeff Small, a political operative who worked at the U.S. Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration. Stateline and Colorado Newsline spoke to three GOP clerks who said they had spoken to Small last week.

Steve Schleiker, clerk of El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs and is the most populous county in the state, said that on July 9 he received a text and call from Small, who introduced himself in a voicemail as someone who “works for the White House.”

Schleiker said that when he called back, Small said he wanted to build relationships with clerks because the Trump administration was unhappy with progress on the president’s elections executive order. He later connected Schleiker with a Homeland Security official who wanted to test the security of El Paso County’s election systems, said Schleiker, who added that he opposed the request.

Weld County Clerk Carly Koppes said she also heard from Small, but that Small told her he wasn’t under contract or being paid for the calls. Small indicated he was making the calls on behalf of former colleagues, Koppes said.

Small, a former Capitol Hill chief of staff who now works for a Colorado-based government affairs firm, didn’t return a call to his office on Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the agency works with local partners to ensure elections remain safe.

“We don’t disclose every single conversation we have with them,” an unidentified DHS spokesperson wrote in an email.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said he was aware of 10 clerks approached by Small. He noted that every clerk approached by Small hails from a county that uses Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems.

While Dominion is widely used in Colorado, it’s also been the subject of election conspiracy theories. A former candidate for county sheriff in southwest Colorado was arrested in June, accused of firebombing a clerk’s office. Colorado Public Radio reported the suspect, according to law enforcement, had spoken publicly about trying to get rid of the county’s Dominion machines.

“I think the really important thing to say here is that it was Republican clerks who stood up to a Republican administration and said, ‘No, we’re going to follow the law,’” Crane said.

The intent of the efforts by Small and the federal government “has been muddied up it seems,” Montrose County Clerk Tressa Guynes said. Based on her conversations with other clerks, she said, it appeared Small represented one thing to other clerks and then “represented maybe a watered-down version by the time it got to me.”

Guynes said Small wanted to discuss Trump’s elections executive order. She said Small asked whether she would be willing to support a federal task force’s efforts in an advisory role.

“I said absolutely I will advise,” Guynes said. “I said I’m frankly glad that they’re finally reaching out to the boots on the ground, the people who actually conduct the elections, instead of listening to those who have never conducted a Colorado election.”

Letters to other states

As Colorado grapples with the most far-reaching request, other states are choosing how to respond. In Wisconsin, the state election commission responded to a DOJ request for the voter registration list with instructions on how to request public voter data.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, responded on June 2 — after DOJ in a May 20 letter told the state to ensure voter registration applicants provided a driver’s license number, if they have one, instead of a partial Social Security number. The DOJ also wanted Arizona to check voters against a state database to look for noncitizens.

Fontes replied that Arizona complies with federal law and conducts checks using a state motor vehicle division database.

“We are focused on dealing with DOJ in a good faith manner while ensuring we are following the letter of federal and state laws,” Fontes spokesperson JP Martin wrote in an email to Stateline.

More recently, Arizona received a letter July 10 from DOJ about implementation of Trump’s elections executive order. Rhode Island Democratic Secretary of State Gregg Amore also received an email about the order the same day, according to a copy provided to the Rhode Island Current.

In the email, Scott Laragy, principal deputy director in the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, asks for a call to discuss a possible information-sharing agreement to provide DOJ with information on individuals who have registered to vote or have voted despite being ineligible, or those who have committed other forms of election fraud.

The email echoes the language in Trump’s elections executive order, which calls for DOJ to reach information-sharing agreements with states. While much of the order, which focused on proof of citizenship in elections, has been struck down in federal court, provisions related to information sharing remain.

The executive order directs Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, to prioritize enforcement of federal “election integrity laws” in uncooperative states. It also requires her to review grants and other DOJ funds that could be withheld from states that resist.

Some states have already struck deals with the Trump administration. Indiana Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales announced an agreement last week with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allowing the state to access a database to verify the citizenship of registered voters. Alabama Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen has signed a similar agreement.

“With your cooperation, we plan to use this information to enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections,” Laragy wrote to Rhode Island.

Janine Weisman of the Rhode Island Current and Lindsey Toomer of Colorado Newsline contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.