1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to oppose the Trump administration's unprecedented federal assault on state-run elections, including the recent FBI raid on Fulton County, Georgia's elections office and the passage of the SAVE Act. The FBI raid on Fulton County involved federal agents seizing 2020 ballots, ballot images, voter rolls, and tabulator tapes based on an affidavit with critical flaws. The affidavit relies on long-debunked allegations already investigated through multiple audits and recounts that confirmed the accuracy of the 2020 results. Much of the evidence came from Kurt Olsen, a Stop the Steal lawyer who was sanctioned and fined for making "unequivocally false" election claims while representing Kari Lake in 2022. Most troubling, the affidavit does not actually allege a crime occurred, using only conditional language about what would violate federal law "if these deficiencies were the result of intentional action." The statute of limitations for the alleged crimes has already expired. The SAVE Act passed by the House this week would mandate voters provide passports or birth certificates when registering, potentially disenfranchising up to 69 million women who changed their names when married. It would require monthly voter roll purges using DHS's SAVE database, which is not related to voting, and create a centralized database that makes elections more vulnerable to attack. This addresses a nonexistent problem. The Heritage Foundation's own database shows only 36 cases of fraud in Arizona across 25 years out of over 42 million ballots cast, a rate of 0.0000845 percent. The administration is also demanding complete voter rolls from all states. While federal courts in Michigan, Oregon, and California have dismissed DOJ lawsuits against states that refused, at least 10 states have voluntarily complied. Texas and Alaska signed agreements allowing the DOJ to analyze their voter rolls and order removals within 45 days. I urge you to defend the constitutional principle that states, not the executive branch, run elections. Please oppose the SAVE Act and any federal efforts to seize control of state election administration.