Trump has no valid legal justification
RI Secretary of State Gregg M. Amore
Throughout the past month, you may have seen the news
regarding the US Department of Justice requesting copies of voter registration
lists, including non-public information like voters’ Social Security numbers or
driver’s license numbers, from states across the country and here in Rhode
Island. 
Speaking of files...
I’d like to be clear — the RI Department of State does not
intend to share Rhode Islanders’ personally identifiable information without
valid legal justification or a court order.
I am confident that Rhode Island is a leader in secure,
accessible elections. The request from the Department of Justice is deeply
concerning to me, because the administration of elections falls under the
purview of the states under the United States Constitution and only Congress,
not the executive branch, can override state elections processes.
In administering elections, it is one of my most important
responsibilities to safeguard the data privacy of Rhode Islanders. This is not
a responsibility I take lightly. I will share our publicly available state
voter list. However, I will not participate in an unsubstantiated search for
data and information.
Through ongoing and routine voter list maintenance, more
than 106,000 voters have been removed since 2023 to keep voter lists
up-to-date and accurate.
In 2020, Rhode Island became one of the first states to
begin conducting risk-limiting audits — a public process conducted to verify
election results by hand counting of a random sample of paper ballots.
The most recent risk-limiting audit in 2024 proved that the
voting machines read ballots the way voters intended them to. To keep all of
our elections safe, our Elections Division recently hosted a cybersecurity
summit for state and local elections officials, local IT staff, and law
enforcement.
The efforts by the Department of Justice will not impact the
RI Department of State from conducting the broad range of work we do.
