Pam Bondi Demands WV Voter Records, Sues After Kris Warner Refuses “All Fields”
The U.S. Department of Justice has sued West Virginia’s chief election official after the state refused to provide a complete copy of its statewide voter registration list, a step DOJ says is needed to review election-record compliance.
The immediate fight is over what “complete” means, because DOJ says it asked for all fields in the database, including sensitive identifiers, and West Virginia would not turn that over.
In the federal complaint filed Feb. 26, DOJ names Secretary of State Kris Warner in his official capacity and cites the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as the authority for a written demand requiring election records be made available for inspection, reproduction, and copying.
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DOJ alleges it first requested the statewide voter registration list on Sept. 8, 2025, received a refusal to provide “all fields” on Sept. 22, followed up multiple times, and got another refusal in a Feb. 11, 2026 letter.
“Accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in DOJ’s announcement.
West Virginia officials have argued the request reaches into personally identifying information and creates privacy and security concerns for voters, while DOJ’s filing says the request is tied to evaluating list-maintenance duties under the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act.
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The case lands amid a widening national dispute over whether federal investigators can compel states to provide unredacted voter-roll data, with multiple states resisting and DOJ expanding litigation across the country.
Next steps will likely include West Virginia’s response in court and early motions testing whether DOJ’s cited statutes authorize access to the specific fields requested, especially the most sensitive identifiers.
For now, the lawsuit puts West Virginia’s voter-data protections and federal election oversight on a collision course.
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