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The U.S. Department of Justice has directed Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore to preserve records from the 2024 federal election while its fight over access to unredacted voter data continues on appeal.
The September 4 letter warned that failure to preserve relevant documents could bring civil or criminal sanctions, Rhode Island Current reported September 16. DOJ spokesperson Kiersten Pels told the outlet the letter was a standard litigation-hold notice related to the existing voter-roll lawsuit, rather than a new investigation.
U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy dismissed that lawsuit April 17 and denied the government's request to compel production of the voter list. Her order found that DOJ had not supplied a legally sufficient factual basis or purpose for its demand under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
The court record shows that Amore offered the publicly available voter list in September 2025 but refused to provide the unredacted information DOJ requested. The disputed data includes driver's license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
McElroy's order explains that DOJ originally sought the voter list to assess Rhode Island's compliance with federal voter-roll maintenance requirements. The judge found that the demand did not identify facts suggesting the state had violated those requirements. She also concluded that the stated purpose did not satisfy the statute DOJ relied on.
The opinion resolved the case on that statutory ground, rather than deciding every privacy objection raised by Amore and the intervening organizations. Its discussion traced the Civil Rights Act's election-record provisions to efforts to investigate violations of voting rights.
DOJ appealed June 4, according to Rhode Island Current. In its September 28 report, The Brown Daily Herald said the department was continuing to pursue the Rhode Island appeal.
The Herald also reported that Amore's office had not responded to the preservation letter, citing state Department of State spokesperson Faith Chybowski. Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion told the outlet he was concerned that federal access to the unredacted files could compromise voter privacy.
Marion also questioned the breadth of the preservation demand, telling Rhode Island Current that the request for 2024 election documents extended beyond the subject of the voter-roll litigation.
Updated October 2: This article has been expanded with additional sourced context.
Sources:
https://www.brennancenter.org/media/15505/download/us_v_amore_mem_op_and_order.pdf?inline=1