Editor’s note: After this story was published on Feb. 4, Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office denied that it had provided the U.S. Department of Justice with unredacted voter files, but declined to provide an explanation for what that office meant when it stated in writing that it had “fully satisfied” DOJ’s Aug. 14 request to do so.
Attorneys for the secretary of state’s office also issued a cease and desist demand, calling for Montana Free Press to retract the story.
The story was updated Feb. 5, 2026, to include post-publication response from the secretary of state’s office and legal counsel, and to add additional information about MTFP’s attempts to seek pre-publication comment from the secretary.
The story was also updated to clarify that documents obtained through a public records request show that Jacobsen communicated to the Department of Justice that her office had complied with DOJ’s request, which stated: “…the statewide VRL [Voter Registration List] must contain all fields, including the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number …”
The documents provided to MTFP did not include any attachments or voter registration lists.
The story was additionally updated to include downloadable copies of the Aug. 14, 2025, and Dec. 9, 2025, correspondence between the U.S. Department of Justice and the secretary of state’s office.
Emails from her office say Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen has handed over confidential voter data to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has asked the state to remove, upon demand, any voters who may be deemed ineligible by federal officials.
The described provision of voter data, as well as the federal government’s proposal to screen Montana’s voter list, was brought to light through a records request filed by Montana Free Press in November and fulfilled this week.
The Department of Justice has been demanding unredacted voter files from most states since the spring of 2025, and has sued multiple states for refusing to deliver them. In a July 14, 2025, email to Jacobsen’s staff, Maureen Riordan, then acting chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote that Montana’s voting records were required to “facilitate a review for noncitizens and dead voters via [the Department of Homeland Security].”
The federal government’s request for state voter data escalated in December when the Department of Justice asked secretaries of state to sign a memorandum of understanding stating that changes to voter rolls deemed necessary by the federal government would be enacted by the states, which would then be required to resubmit the voter rolls to the DOJ for confirmation. The memorandum’s terms also allow the federal government to share the voter information with private contractors.
The emails obtained by MTFP show that Jacobsen communicated to the DOJ that she had submitted the voter information requested by the department’s Civil Rights Division last fall, but in December declined to sign the memorandum of understanding allowing the DOJ to dictate changes to Montana’s voter rolls.
After the publication of this story, Clay R. Leland, an attorney in the secretary of state’s office, contacted MTFP to assert, in full: “No ‘confidential voter data’ was turned over. Additionally, no ‘unredacted voter file’ was provided. Your below referenced article is filled with false information, deception, and dangerously inaccurate assumptions that are causing immediate damage. You specifically state in multiple places in the article that the above was turned over. Such was not. A public voter file is entirely different from a confidential, unredacted voter file.”
Also on Wednesday evening, the secretary of state’s official Facebook page posted the following: “We are aware of a recklessly false article published by the Montana Free Press this evening. The ‘article’ is a blatant lie, beginning from the opening sentence, and we’ve demanded its immediate retraction. This kind of irresponsible journalism is unacceptable and Montanans deserve better.”
Subsequent attempts by MTFP reporters and editors to clarify the nature of the article’s alleged inaccuracies have gone unanswered.
The Trump administration has sued 24 states that declined to share their voter information, which includes partial Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and dates of birth. Social Security numbers are classified as personally identifiable information in federal and state law and are guarded as confidential under the federal Privacy Act of 1974.
Many of the states that have been sued provided the DOJ with “public” versions of the list with sensitive information redacted, as Montana appears to have done on July 31, 2025, before the Justice Department expressly made a legal argument on Aug. 14, 2025, for the unredacted file, which emails from Jacobsen’s office later confirmed providing.
Few secretaries of state have signed the memorandum of understanding empowering the federal department to dictate changes to state voter rolls, according the the Brennan Center for Justice, which watchdogs the process as part of the New York University School of Law
Jacobsen communicated her decision to not sign the agreement offered by DOJ on Dec. 29, 2025, explaining in a letter to Civil Rights Division attorney Eric Neff that Montana would carefully consider any voter-disqualifying information submitted by the feds, but would not guarantee action solely on federal authority.
“Should you find any individuals who are suspected of being ineligible, please send any and all information used to identify the individual. Please also include the reason and any source of information used in determining potential ineligibility,” Jacobsen wrote.
Jacobsen’s office did not respond to repeated requests to interview Jacobsen placed with three different parties at the secretary of state’s office over two days, including two staffers directly involved in voter data discussions with the U.S. Department of Justice. Specifically, MTFP contacted SOS Communications, which on Dec. 2, 2025, informed U.S. DOJ that “Montana fully satisfied the August 14 request” made by the department. That Aug. 14, 2025, request from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division specifies that voter data from the state “must contain all fields, including a [registered voter’s] full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number.”
After receiving no response from anyone affiliated with SOS Communications, MTFP, on the morning of this story’s publication, emailed Austin James, chief legal counsel to the secretary of state. Records provided to MTFP by the office showed James was copied on most communications between the secretary’s office and the DOJ. MTFP specifically asked James to confirm whether the secretary had fully satisfied DOJ’s Aug. 14 request, as her office’s Dec. 9, 2025, email stated. We again asked to interview Jacobsen.
James did not respond.
Jacobsen’s apparent sharing of the state’s voter data came as news to legislators who regularly interact with Montana’s secretary of state on election matters. Several lawmakers told MTFP this week they knew nothing about the sharing of confidential voter information with the federal government, and were unaware of the DOJ’s memorandum of understanding, despite having received a briefing on election matters from the secretary of state 15 days after Jacobsen rejected the federal agreement.
State Administration and Veterans’ Affairs Interim Committee Chair Sen. Theresa Manzella, R-Hamilton, has consistently expressed concern about non-citizens voting in Montana elections and urged cooperation with Trump administration directives, but said she hadn’t been briefed by Jacobsen’s staff about the provision of Montana’s voter rolls. Manzella has consistently said the secretary of state’s office isn’t doing enough to clear voter rolls of ineligible voters.
When President Donald Trump issued an executive order on March 25, 2025, calling for broad federal intervention in state election practices, and specifically voter registration policies, Manzella advised Montana officials to get in line. But that doesn’t necessarily mean acquiescence, she told MTFP Wednesday.
“That sounds pretty reasonable to me, actually,” Manzella said of Jacobsen’s refusal to sign the federal memorandum. “I don’t want her to be a doormat for the federal government.”
SAVA committee Vice Chair Rep. Marc Lee, D-Butte, said Tuesday that he was also unaware of Jacobsen’s dealings with U.S. DOJ concerning Montana’s voter rolls.
“That’s something that I don’t recall, and I haven’t missed a meeting,” Lee said. “I don’t recall any information being provided whatsoever concerning that.”
The SAVA committee meets at the Capitol every other month and receives updates from Jacobsen’s staff. Nearly every meeting includes testimony from members of the public concerned that little is being done to remove deceased people and foreigners from Montana voter rolls, though repeated election audits show voter fraud is rare.
Lee said most Montanans he knows wouldn’t want their personal information shared.
“Montanans immensely value their privacy,” Lee said. “They would be very upset about being in a national voter list, especially if it’s including driver’s license information and very sensitive information. I would believe that the vast majority of Montanans would be up in arms to know that this was just done, and not only just done, but done without their knowledge.”
On Monday, Trump told listeners of Dan Bongino’s podcast that Congress should take control of elections — a power given to states in the U.S. Constitution.
“We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won,” Trump told Bongino. “Like the 2020 election, I won that election by so much. Everybody knows it.”
U.S. courts have repeatedly dismissed lawsuits alleging Trump campaign claims of 2020 election fraud.
At the same time that Jacobsen was refusing to sign the U.S. Department of Justice’s memorandum, the secretary of state issued a mass mailing to Montana voters touting her election-security work in coordination with Trump.
“Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen is partnering with the Trump Administration to strengthen election security,” the mailer reads. Republican and Democratic state legislators have since criticized the cost of the mailer, which state records document as $197,000.
Though voter registration, as defined in the U.S. Constitution, is controlled by states, the Civil Rights Act of 1965 empowers the Department of Justice to intervene based on evidence that voters’ rights are being denied.
It’s the Civil Rights Act that the Department of Justice cited when directing states to hand over their voter information, as the federal government did in an Aug. 14, 2025, letter to Jacobsen.
But there must be basis and purpose for a request for the federal government to intervene, said Eileen O’Connor, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice.
“It was passed in the 1960s because, in the South, part of the attempts to prevent Black Americans from registering and voting were not only not permitting Black Americans to register to vote, but also destroying records so that there was no way of proving that they were blatantly discriminated against,” O’Connor said.
States involved in lawsuits over the federal request for state voting records argue that the federal government hasn’t provided legal evidence supporting the request. Merely wanting to screen voter data for eligibility isn’t reason enough, O’Connor said. The responsibility of managing voter rolls belongs to states.
The security of voters’ sensitive information is also a major concern, according to the Brennan Center, which monitors interactions between the Department of Justice and the states. O’Connor described the security protocols spelled out in the federal government’s memorandum of understanding as extremely basic two-step authentication of the sort necessary to shop online. The DOJ agreement also states that the federal agency can share the voter information with private contractors.
In September, the Brennan Center reported that organized groups of 2020 election deniers used Eagle AI artificial intelligence to match public voter data with other data sources, like the National Change of Address database and court records, to generate lists of allegedly ineligible voters. The resulting lists have been error-prone, according to the Brennan Center.
The primary Department of Justice contact for Montana has experience with organizations that believe voter fraud is common in U.S. elections. Neff, a Civil Rights Division trial attorney who in 2022 was at the center of a $5 million legal settlement with Los Angeles County, California, prosecuted a case based on a bogus tip from True Vote, a conspiracy group alleging that the 2020 election was stolen, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In December, after the clerk of courts in Fulton County, Georgia, refused to turn over that state’s voting records, Neff was part of the federal legal team that sued, arguing that the sweeping powers of the Civil Rights Act required Fulton County to comply.
Neff wrote to Jacobsen on Dec. 2, providing the memorandum of understanding and giving the secretary of state seven days to sign it. The document pointedly commits Jacobsen to changing Montana voter rolls as directed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The terms require that the revised voter rolls be resubmitted to the federal government.
“You agree therefore that within 45 days of receiving that notice from the Justice Department of any issues, insufficiencies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns, your state will clean its [voter data] by removing ineligible voters and resubmit the updated [voter data] to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to verify proper list maintenance has occurred,” the MOU states.
Seven days later, when Jacobsen had not responded, Neff applied more pressure.
“If I have missed any reply or attempts to reach me, please let me know,” Neff said in a Dec. 9, 2025, email. “If I do not hear anything by end of day today, the DOJ will take that as a refusal to comply.”
Jacobsen responded that her office had months earlier delivered everything requested by the U.S. DOJ in its Aug. 14 letter requesting the voter data. It’s that August letter that specifies that voters’ partial Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and dates of birth be included in the handover.
“Hopefully, you are aware that Montana fully satisfied the August 14th request thereafter,” Jacobsen informed Neff on Dec. 9, confirming that she had provided the DOJ with Montana’s unredacted voter rolls. “We received the new proposal with the additional terms outlined in an MOU. The legal team is reviewing, and we look forward to partnering, once again, with President Trump on his election integrity agenda, under the laws I took an oath to uphold.”
Jacobsen then asks for more time to decide whether to sign. Secretaries of state would be meeting with U.S. Department of Justice on Dec. 16 to discuss the memorandum, the secretary told Neff in an email. She wanted to know the outcome of that meeting before signing anything.
Neff then delivered another prod on Dec. 18, 2025.
“We had our meeting with 2 SOS on Monday, including Michael Watson of Mississippi. Earlier today, Mississippi agreed to provide their unredacted voter list. This brings the number of states who have turned over their data or are in the process of doing so to 9. Where does Montana stand on this?”
In response, Jacobsen informs Neff on Dec. 29, 2025, that she will not sign the memorandum of understanding.
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