U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, warned state election officials of growing federal threats to election administration and voter privacy during recent remarks.
Padilla sharply criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for filing lawsuits against 24 states, including California, seeking unredacted access to voter rolls that contain voters’ personally identifiable information and condemned a letter from AG Pam Bondi urging Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to surrender the state’s voter data in exchange for halting an aggressive federal immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis.
“Is it really about public safety in Minnesota, or is it about trying to get the voter data they’ve been desperately trying to get for almost eight years now?” Padilla said, adding that Congress would continue to assert its constitutional authority over elections.
The senator further warned that the Department of Homeland Security’s flawed Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements program could lead to unlawful voter purges if used to screen voter registration lists and could expose sensitive voter data to misuse by election-denier groups.
Padilla also criticized Trump’s repeated attempts to override state and congressional control of elections through executive actions, many of which have already been blocked by federal courts. He raised additional concerns about the suspension of election security-focused work and denounced recent actions by federal intelligence and law enforcement officials targeting Georgia’s elections office, calling the move a chilling effort to revive disproven claims about the 2020 election.