In the immediate, chaotic aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder by ICE agents, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz with three demands. One of the demands required Minnesota to turn over state voter rolls to the DOJ. Walz and other Minnesota officials rebuked the letter — Minnesota’s Secretary of State remarked that the demand was “deeply disturbing” and an “unlawful request a part of an apparent ransom to pay for our state's peace and security."
Rick Hasen, the Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, joins Jen to remind us that the federal government—and especially the President—has very little business in state voter information. Hasen connects Bondi’s letter to the administration’s tallest conspiracies: Trump’s 2016 voter fraud claim, the Great Replacement theory, and the disenfranchisment scheme.
Professor Rick Hasen is the Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA. Professor Hasen was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal and one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California by both the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. We are very happy to have back with us Rick Hasen, who is Professor of Law at UCLA. Welcome, Rick.
Rick Hasen
Good to be back with you.
Jen Rubin
Rick is one of the premier election law leaders, and in the midst of Minnesota, something very curious happened. Obviously, Rick has been outspoken, as have many lawyers, about the, unjustified, unprovoked, unconstitutional murders of Americans by ICE, not to mention their other, activities in the Border Patrol as well. But I want to focus with Rick, since we have his expertise. on this very curious letter that Pam Bondi sent to the governor of Minnesota, give us the background for what the administration has been trying to do all around the country in terms of obtaining certain information from the states, relating to elections and election voter rolls.
Rick Hasen
Right, so this letter that Bondi sent, looked like a set of demands in order to stand down or alleviate some of the tension in Minnesota. The letters made 3 demands, although it didn’t really offer a quid pro quo, it just said, if you want things to be better, here are three simple steps you could take. And one of those steps was completely unrelated to immigration or law enforcement. It was that Minnesota should turn over its unredacted voter roles. And by that, we mean not just the publicly available list of people’s names and their party affiliation that’s typically available, but their social security numbers, their home address, their signature, all the kinds of things that states generally don’t release when people ask for, voting rolls for purposes of campaigning or something like that. So, there was no obvious connection, logical connection, between what’s going on with immigration enforcement and the kind of the overreach that we’ve seen in Minnesota, and voting, which is a completely different topic.
And so, this was part of a larger, approach of the Department of Justice to try to assemble what appears to be a national list, unredacted list, of all the voters in the country with all of their personal information. Some states, like Texas, are willingly complying. The federal government demands it, and the state turns it over. And if you’re a person in Texas, you might worry that this information is potentially getting into the wrong hands, as we’ve already seen happen with some of the Doge releases of information. But some states, have pushed back and said the federal government doesn’t have the right to this information, and DOJ has actually gone in and ensued in a number of states trying to get access to this information.
Jen Rubin
Does the federal government have a right to this information? Last time I checked, elections were run essentially, by the states.
Rick Hasen
So, our election system is very fragmented, right? Some authority is federal authority. The Voting Rights Act, for example, is federal authority that governs elections. Some is state level, some is county level. And so we divide power up. The principal responsibility for running elections, even federal elections, is left to the states. The Constitution says that Congress can override state rules for congressional elections, but otherwise, it’s really a state matter, and importantly, the President doesn’t have any role to play in running elections, and that’s been the subject of litigation over his executive order that tries to take some power over running elections.
So, the federal government has made arguments that there are three federal statutes that give it the right to this information. One is a 1993 law, commonly known as Motor Voter, which is the National Voter Registration Act, which provides for access to voters to register to vote, and assures that states have clean voting rolls, that they’re removing people who’ve died or moved. The second is the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which was passed in the wake of, the 2000 Florida election debacle. That, provides protections for voters and, security measures to make sure our voting is done with integrity. And the last is the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which gives the federal government the power to investigate potential civil rights violation, and in some circumstances, demand information from states.
So, the federal government has argued that all of these laws give it access And the states have pushed back, saying not only do none of these laws give access, you’re not claiming that there’s some voting rights, violation, some intimidation of voters that would follow under the Civil Rights Act, and there’s nothing in the NVRA or HAVA that would give this. But also, there’s something called the Privacy Act, which requires that, information that is not necessary to fulfill certain government functions, must remain private and can’t be shared. And so, it’s been this battle in the states, and so far, DOJ has been losing. As recently as yesterday. a federal district court indicated he was going to dismiss DOJ’s suit after a hearing in which, this is in Oregon, where Oregon officials brought the Bondi letter to the attention of the judge, say, hey, look, this is not about any kind of you know, reasonable request for information, or federal government law enforcement, this is a kind of shakedown.
Jen Rubin
Why do we think they want this information? They’re not entitled to it. They’re not very big, last time I checked, on enforcing the Voting Rights Act. In fact, they want to get rid of the Voting Rights Act. What do they want this information for?
Rick Hasen
So I think we have to go back to the first Trump administration to answer that question. You may remember, probably most of your viewers don’t, but you probably remember that Trump formed a commission headed by Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, who’s a noted vote denier from Kansas, currently their Attorney General, to try to come up with, suggestions for improving American elections. It’s not unusual for presidents to call these things, but this was stacked with a bunch of election deniers, people making false claims of massive voter fraud and all of that.
And what Kobach and Pence and others tried to do was assemble this massive voter list And they were rebuffed. Even the Secretary of State of Mississippi, one of the most Republican states in the country, said he can jump in the Gulf of Mexico if he thinks he’s getting that information. Now he’d probably say Gulf of America, but you get the point that states are protecting their prerogatives. What would be the purpose of this? I think the idea would be to try to match voter information with a federal database that exists of people who are citizens and not citizens. It’s not a perfect database, but it includes all naturalized citizens, And to try and show that, there’s a big problem of non-citizen voting in the United States, which there isn’t, which we could talk about. But the purpose of this was… it was, I think, a pretext to try to pass federal legislation that would require people to provide documentary proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate and maybe a marriage license if you change your name, or a naturalization certificate, before you can register to vote.
The House actually passed a version of this law called the SAVE Act, in late 2025. It stalled in the Senate. But this, I think, is meant to give momentum to this kind of law. We know, unlike voter ID laws, where the effects are really uncertain, we know that these laws are tremendously disenfranchising. So when Kovacs Kansas, tried to do this. There were 30,000 people just at the very beginning, otherwise eligible voters who were not allowed to register to vote in that state, and there was negligible proof of voter fraud, the, Federal District Court, a Republican appointee, heard evidence Chris Kobach said he was presenting the tip of the iceberg, and the judge described the amount of evidence of non-citizen voting as an icicle. That there really wasn’t any, but this was very disenfranchising throughout the law. But I think that’s the end game here. Make registration harder in the hopes that that’s going to help Republicans win. Now, I don’t think that’s actually true with the changing base of the Republican Party, but that seems to be the calculation.
Jen Rubin
And we’ve seen this in other instances. I recall in Alabama, they had a similar instance in which the officials were convinced that there were a bunch of people who were not properly on the voting rolls. It turned out that there was simply a lag in information. Those people had largely become naturalized citizens. And the entire theory behind this is somehow that people who are undocumented, who now fear for their lives because ICE and the Border Patrol, would go to the trouble of registering to vote and make themselves a target, I don’t quite understand the logic or what they think immigrants would be doing on the voting rolls. Don’t they generally try to avoid federal authorities and state authorities, frankly? Isn’t that a problem?
Rick Hasen
So we should talk about how states usually deal with the citizenship question, because in every state, to vote for president, you’ve got to be a citizen. You sign a declaration under penalty of perjury. It is a felony to lie and say you’re a citizen if you’re not on a voter registration form. Why would non-citizens risk doing this? Now, we do have occasional cases where people intentionally, try and do this, but they’re very small.
So, back in 2016, when Trump won the election against Hillary Clinton, he lost in the popular vote by about 3 million votes, and Trump claimed that there were 3 million non-citizens voting, all for, Hillary Clinton, you know, just a typical outrageous claim of Trump, supported by no information. There was a heavy, investigation across the country to find all these non-citizen voters. And they didn’t find 3 million, or 300,000, or 30,000, or 3,000, or 300. They found 30 in the country, and some of those were people who actually thought that they were eligible to vote, maybe they were green card holders, they thought they could vote, or they didn’t know. Lots of times when people who are non-citizens get registered to vote, it’s because they go to the DMV, and when you’re at the DMV under that motor voter law, citizens are supposed to be offered an opportunity to register to vote. Sometimes they get inadvertently offered, and they’re just clicking the boxes on the little screen, and they just get registered to vote, and then they don’t vote.
But it’s really rare to see non-citizens voting. But of course. claiming that there’s a lot of voter fraud and claiming it’s non-citizens is a way of kind of bringing together two Republican boogeymen, you know, that, you know, one, hordes of illegal aliens coming in, and second, they’re coming to vote. They’re gonna replace the white voters, you know, it’s kind of this group ties in with the Great Replacement Theory. So it’s a way of tying together two narratives, completely unsupported by the facts. but to serve, I think, a number of political purposes.
Jen Rubin
And even groups like the Heritage Foundation, which have made this their life’s mission to find this, have found the most insignificant numbers of actual voter fraud. In fact, we make it very difficult to vote in this country, and like other countries, you have to go through the process of registering. Most countries, you simply show up to vote. We’ve made it hard to vote, and some would argue too hard. The… Oregon case is interesting, and of course, in Minnesota itself, the judge was presented with this information in the context of the ICE and Border Patrol operation, and said, what are you doing here?
This kind of undermines your stated reason, which was this is all about immigration, or crime, or something, and here you’re using it to ask for voting information. doesn’t this undermine, really, both things that the government is doing? On one hand, they say they have a legal right to do this. Well then, why need they threaten the governor? And the other is, they’re asserting that ICE is doing all of these draconian things, because of crime and illegal immigrants, and it turns out to be that it’s really because they want them to pressure governments, for state governments, for the voter rolls. This seems to be not a good move for the federal government to kind of confess, what they’re up to.
Rick Hasen
Yeah, it does make me think that either the Attorney General, Bondi, or people working with her are not thinking this through. You know, either, you know, this is just performative, and I, you know, I wouldn’t dismiss that, you know, this is a performance for Donald Trump. Let me show you how great I am, I’m gonna bring up your boogeyman of voter fraud. Either it’s performative and it’s not serious, in which case, you know, as you mentioned, it’s a big backfire.
Or it’s something calculated, which I think is worse, because that really shows the total inability of the, DOJ to put together it’s government interests with what it’s actually demanding. So, you know, if you really claim that immigration enforcement was a problem, then focus on immigration enforcement in Minnesota. Say, let’s get more state-federal cooperation. And we’re starting to hear noises like that, you know. pretty clear over the last 24 hours, Trump is backing down, does not like the optics of murdering citizens in the streets. And so, you know, maybe there’s gonna be a change, and that, you know, I think… It’s a small move in the right direction. I worry that they’re just going to move the operation somewhere else, but it does seem that the people of Minnesota stood their ground and really are making a difference in the national conversation.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now, as you alluded to, they’ve made the federal government’s made these demands among many states, and there are many cases that are now going through the courts. Is this Bondi letter likely to make an appearance in every single one of them, where the state is contesting the federal government’s demand?
Rick Hasen
No doubt, especially because, you know, right after the hearing that the federal judge in Oregon ordered to talk about the letter, the judge ruled from the bench, which is really… not something you usually see, and, you know, this was not, like, on a preliminary injunction, so it was not, like, something that had to be done immediately. A judge said, I’m just missing the case, and, you know, in a few days, we’ll get a written order. We’re told a written order is going to follow. But yeah, I think it’s radioactive, and I think it would be smart for the lawyers, and then we’ve got smart lawyers litigating these cases, it’d be smart for the lawyers to raise this In every state, to show the pretextual nature of what’s going on.
Jen Rubin
And the federal government does something like this. They inadvertently kind of show their hand. They have been making before this a whole series of representations and arguments. penalty of perjury. They make these arguments, they bring in witnesses, they have affidavits, and suddenly we find out, well, they’re really up to something else. Many people want to know, is there no sanction? Is there no penalty for having really conducted this masquerade, this charade, up to now, and suddenly you tell us something else is going on?
Rick Hasen
Well, I do think that there will be consequences for some of these lawyers down the line. It’s, you know, just speaking more generally, we’re seeing lots of career lawyers at the Department of Justice, unwilling to sign certain documents that make claims that are unsupported or make legal arguments that are unfounded. We see that Mr. Bovino is going to be called back into court because he may have violated a court order in terms of intimidating protesters and things like that. I do think there will be some consequences.
Now, probably not enough, and, you know, some of this may have to wait until after the end of the Trump administration, but I do think for at least some of these people, there’ll be a reckoning, and even if they don’t face legal sanctions. I think that some of the arguments that are being made with an apparent straight face, you know, they would be rejected out of hand by many lawyers, and I don’t expect that they’re gonna be… these lawyers are gonna be welcomed back into the legal community with open arms. If they’re taking positions that I’m not talking about controversial positions, but, you know, either lying about or concealing information about facts or making frivolous legal arguments.
Jen Rubin
Let me close with this, We have commented here no end, and you have commented on the failures of the Supreme Court, whether you think they’re operating in good faith or not. But at the district court’s level, regardless of which party nominated these judges, we’ve seen, really, a remarkable fidelity to the rule of law. Has it been a pleasant surprise to you? Have you expected that all along, that there would be so many judges, even judges appointed by this president, that have said, no, you’re not playing it straight with the court?
Rick Hasen
Well, you know, the Supreme Court hears kind of the most controversial cases about which there might be no legal answer that’s been given before, and so it’s not surprising that they kind of go out on a limb sometimes, but Federal district court judges, they’re kind of the workhorses of the federal judiciary, and they’re just trying to do their jobs, and if they apply existing precedence, so much of what… the Trump administration is trying to do is beyond the bounds, that, you know, I don’t want to say I’m surprised, I’m happy to see that the lines are holding there, even if the Supreme Court, at least on its emergency shadow docket cases, has been giving Trump some victories, you know.
What we learned after Trump’s first term is the wheels of justice turn very slowly. They turn too slowly. They turn too slowly in terms of being able to give, a chance to prosecute Trump for violations related to trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election. But for the most part, eventually, the, wheels of justice do turn, and courts catch up. And so I’m hoping, I’m hopeful that you know, not on the most controversial questions, not even on questions about, you know, what the future of the Voting Rights Act is, but just basic questions about the rule of law. I think that there are a lot of judges throughout the federal judiciary, and in the state judiciaries as well, who are willing to hold the line and ensure that we continue to have a rule of law in the United States. So, that’s a low bar, but it’s a good thing to see.
Jen Rubin
It is a good thing, and you know, people think these justices are immune from criticism and public opinion, but when Justice Kavanaugh goes back in one of these shadow docket cases and said, oh, you know that comment I made that everyone now is using to invoke Kavanaugh stops? I really didn’t mean it, really. There’s a Fourth Amendment. So, I think that shows that even these justices listen to public opinion, they care what their peers out there say, and they don’t want to have, in the most blunt terms, blood on their hands. They want to make sure that they’re seen as guardians of the law, and not promoters of violent lawlessness. So, perhaps that should give us some hope, too. Thank you, as always, Rick, for your expertise. We always enjoy talking to you, and we will look forward to having you back soon. Thanks so much.
Rick Hasen
It was great to be with you.
