"Absolutely not."… that is what Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson told KUTV when she was asked if she would ever hand the Justice Department the voter rolls, and now she is taking a victory lap because Judge David Barlow tossed the DOJ case Friday with prejudice so it cannot even be refiled. Let me explain what this is actually about. The DOJ asked for the complete, unredacted voter registration list, the kind of data you need to match a name on the roll to a real driver's license number, a real Social Security number and a real date of birth, and the argument was simple… the Civil Rights Act of 1960 gives the attorney general the authority to inspect voter registration records to make sure states are actually maintaining their rolls. She offered the public list instead, the same list any campaign can get its hands on, and when they said that does not do the job she dug in and said absolutely not. So ask yourself a simple question. If your rolls are clean, why fight this hard to make sure nobody outside your office can check them? Why is the chief election officer of one of the reddest states in the country celebrating the fact that nobody gets to verify the list her own office keeps? How is this even a thing? I am all for privacy, and yet this is not some hacker or some marketing firm asking, it is the federal government asking whether the people on the rolls are real, alive and eligible, which is the entire point of having a roll in the first place. Privacy is the shield they always grab when someone wants to look under the hood, and it works every time because nobody wants to be the guy who argues against privacy. And make no mistake, this is a Republican. Not Jena Griswold, not some blue state secretary of state, a Republican lieutenant governor in Utah doing the exact thing the left would do and calling it a win for fair and secure elections. Meanwhile the DOJ is sending about six lawyers and paralegals to watch Utah polling places in November, and Harmeet Dhillon says that has nothing to do with Henderson. Fine… watch closely anyway. Deidre… if the rolls are clean, prove it and hand them over. @realDonaldTrump take this one to the Tenth Circuit.
— Joe Oltmann (@Joeoltmann) October 24, 2026
"Absolutely not."… that is what Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson told KUTV when she was asked if she would ever hand the Justice Department the voter rolls, and now she is taking a victory lap because Judge David Barlow tossed the DOJ case Friday with prejudice so it cannot even be refiled.
Let me explain what this is actually about. The DOJ asked for the complete, unredacted voter registration list, the kind of data you need to match a name on the roll to a real driver's license number, a real Social Security number and a real date of birth, and the argument was simple… the Civil Rights Act of 1960 gives the attorney general the authority to inspect voter registration records to make sure states are actually maintaining their rolls. She offered the public list instead, the same list any campaign can get its hands on, and when they said that does not do the job she dug in and said absolutely not.
So ask yourself a simple question. If your rolls are clean, why fight this hard to make sure nobody outside your office can check them? Why is the chief election officer of one of the reddest states in the country celebrating the fact that nobody gets to verify the list her own office keeps? How is this even a thing?
I am all for privacy, and yet this is not some hacker or some marketing firm asking, it is the federal government asking whether the people on the rolls are real, alive and eligible, which is the entire point of having a roll in the first place. Privacy is the shield they always grab when someone wants to look under the hood, and it works every time because nobody wants to be the guy who argues against privacy.
And make no mistake, this is a Republican. Not Jena Griswold, not some blue state secretary of state, a Republican lieutenant governor in Utah doing the exact thing the left would do and calling it a win for fair and secure elections. Meanwhile the DOJ is sending about six lawyers and paralegals to watch Utah polling places in November, and Harmeet Dhillon says that has nothing to do with Henderson. Fine… watch closely anyway.
Deidre… if the rolls are clean, prove it and hand them over.
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