SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois State Board of Elections told the U.S. Department of Justice this week it is complying with all federal laws governing voter registration and the maintenance of voter rolls, and it pushed back against threats by the Trump administration to prosecute state and local authorities for allowing illegal election activity.

“The Board and Illinois election authorities take very seriously their responsibility to maintain up-to-date and accurate voter registration records while ensuring that no eligible voters are disenfranchised by being mistakenly removed from the rolls,” Marni Malowitz, the state board’s general counsel, said in a letter Monday to the U.S. Department of Justice. “Illinois’s comprehensive list maintenance framework, consistent with the (National Voter Registration Act), ensures free and fair elections.”

Read the letter: SBE-DOJ-letter_7-27-26.PDF

Malowitz’s letter was a response to a letter the Justice Department sent July 7 to top election administrators in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., threatening them with criminal prosecution for allowing noncitizens to remain on their voter rolls or to cast ballots.

That feds’ letter also demanded that state officials reply within five days by explaining in detail what procedures they use to regularly scrub their voter rolls of ineligible or inactive voters.

Seeking federal control

Since President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, his administration has made numerous attempts to exert more federal control over elections. Toward that end, Trump has frequently repeated disproven claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, which he lost to former President Joe Biden.

In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to work with other federal agencies in compiling a national list of confirmed U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote.

He also has directed the Postal Service to pursue regulatory changes that would prohibit the transmission of mail-in ballots to or from anyone who is not on that list, although that effort has been stalled by multiple legal challenges.

Trump is also pushing for federal legislation that would require voters to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote as well as photo identification before casting a ballot. However, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, has stalled in the Senate, where it does not have enough votes for passage.

Meanwhile, the administration is also suing Illinois and dozens of other states seeking access to their complete, unredacted statewide voter registration databases, including sensitive personal information such as dates of birth, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

As of Monday, July 27, federal judges in 17 district courts and one appellate court had ruled against the administration, finding DOJ does not have statutory authority to demand such records. No court has yet ruled in DOJ’s favor on the issue. A federal judge in Illinois, however, has not yet ruled on the state board’s motion to dismiss the case.

State board’s response

Responding to DOJ’s July 7 letter threatening prosecution, Malowitz began by noting that DOJ “does not identify any credible evidence of voter fraud or other impropriety in an Illinois election. Nor does it contain any allegation of a violation of federal law by an Illinois election official.”

The letter goes on to argue that the U.S. Constitution “assigns primary responsibility for federal elections to the States, subject only to preemption by Congress.”

In Illinois, the letter states, responsibility for administering elections lies with the State Board of Elections, an independent, bipartisan agency whose members “are not subject to oversight by or direction from public officials or political bodies.”

“Entrusting election supervision to an independent, bipartisan board exemplifies Illinois’s commitment to ensuring public confidence in elections,” the letter states. “The Board, through its bipartisan actions, safeguards against voter fraud, voter suppression, voter confusion, and public corruption.”

Among the federal laws Congress has passed that impose responsibilities on states, the letter notes, are the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

NVRA requires states to make voter registration widely available in places where people engage in other routine interactions with government, such as applying for or renewing their driver’s license or state identification card.

It also provides a uniform voter registration application form that requires applicants to attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens, over the age of 18 and meet the state’s residency requirements for voter eligibility.

HAVA also requires that mail-in voter registration forms include a line where applicants check a box to indicate whether they are a U.S. citizen.

The letter states that voter registration forms in Illinois comply with those standards and, “If an applicant does not make the required certification of citizenship, the voter registration application is denied.”

The letter also states that Illinois election officials routinely check their rolls against several state and federal data sources, including data from the Department of Corrections to identify voters who are incarcerated for felony convictions and records from the Illinois Department of Public Health to identify registered voters who have recently died. Illinois also participates in the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, whose members share voter registration and motor vehicle information to track voters who move from one member state to another.

Finally, the letter states that local election authorities routinely update their lists by mailing direct notices to voters to determine whether registered voters are still living at the same address.

“Illinois’s multilayered approach to voter list maintenance is working,” Malowitz said in the letter to DOJ. “This commitment precludes establishing the specific intent and/or willfulness required for criminal liability under the laws cited in your letter.”

 

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.