What the Delaware court decided
U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews dismissed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit seeking Delaware’s unredacted voter registration data. WHYY reported that Andrews found the federal government had not shown why it needed the state’s complete voter information to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1960. The DOJ argued that information from all states was necessary to support election integrity, according to WHYY’s report.
The DOJ sued Delaware Election Commissioner Anthony Albence in December 2025, after the state declined a federal request made in July of that year. The intervenors’ motion says the department sought the statewide registration list “with all fields,” including addresses, dates of birth and either driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers. It says Albence offered the public voter list but would not provide sensitive identifying information. The details are set out in the intervenors’ motion to dismiss.
What the intervenors argued
Beth Jennings and Gemma Lowery, along with Delaware nonprofits including La Esperanza, the Latin American Community Center and the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence, were permitted to intervene, according to the case docket. Their motion argued that Title III of federal election law did not override Delaware’s privacy protections and that the DOJ had not met Privacy Act requirements. Those were the intervenors’ positions, not findings attributed here to Andrews.
Delaware’s voter-record privacy protections
Delaware law provides two protections relevant to voter records. According to the Delaware Code, a person may petition the Superior Court to keep their address on voter records confidential by showing a legitimate need and lawful purpose. The law also allows voter registration records to be inspected but excludes Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and telephone numbers from inspection.
The same motion says the DOJ maintained at a hearing that it reserved the right to share collected voter data with the Department of Homeland Security. WHYY separately reported that ACLU of Delaware attorney Andrew Bernstein described the organization’s involvement as protecting domestic-violence victims and immigrant communities. WHYY also reported that Elisabeth Frost, who represented Jennings and Lowery, said the ruling brought the number of federal district courts with active cases rejecting the DOJ’s effort to 28. These statements are attributed to WHYY’s reporting, not presented as independent interviews.
Related cases and nationwide figures
Similar DOJ suits have been dismissed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In New Jersey, Judge Zahid Quraishi dismissed with prejudice a case seeking private voter information after the state provided its public voter list but withheld the unredacted file. The New Jersey Monitor reported that Quraishi found the federal records provision did not require the state to produce its digital voter-registration system. The administration could still appeal, according to the New Jersey Monitor.
The Delaware intervenors’ motion says the DOJ sent voter-data demands to 44 states and the District of Columbia. Separately, the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School tracker cited in the article recorded 31 lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C.; 27 had been dismissed on the merits in district court, and none had been decided in the DOJ’s favor. The article also reports that the tracker recorded a district court vacating the DOJ’s voter-data collection policy nationwide on October 9, 2026, and that the department appealed to the D.C. Circuit.
Other election developments in Delaware
Other federal actions have also affected election administration. WHYY reported that President Trump’s March 2026 executive order directed the U.S. Postal Service to restrict delivery of mail-in ballots, and that the Supreme Court blocked some parts of the order from taking effect in September 2026. WHYY also reported that the administration argued, without evidence, that noncitizens were voting widely.
For Delaware’s general election, the DOJ sent election monitors to polling places in New Castle County, WHYY reported. A Washington Post analysis found that the department deployed roughly 1,000 monitors nationwide and that nearly two-thirds of the selected jurisdictions had consistently voted Democratic in recent elections. WHYY reported that Delaware’s election proceeded smoothly.
