Wyoming became the first state to hand the Justice Department its voters' driver's license and partial Social Security numbers

On August 28, 2025, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray transmitted the state's complete voter registration list, including every registered voter's driver's license number and partial Social Security number, to the U.S. Department of Justice, in a letter writing that Wyoming would rely on DOJ's "assurances that the federal privacy protections ... apply to these records." The transfer came in response to a June 2025 DOJ request, made after consultation with the Wyoming Attorney General's office, and made Wyoming the first state to fully comply with a nationwide DOJ campaign that has since sought voter files from nearly every state and sued more than a dozen for refusing.

The transfer drew little public attention for months. That changed after DOJ's broader voter-roll campaign drew national scrutiny, and the Wyoming Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters of Wyoming criticized Gray's decision, saying it "undermines public confidence in our election process" and compromises the work of county clerks who securely maintain the state's voter rolls. Gray responded in a written statement that voter information "has, and continues to remain, confidential under the law," and that he had complied with a lawful request after consulting the Attorney General's office.

Most states that received the same DOJ request either supplied only publicly available data stripped of sensitive fields or refused outright; more than a dozen, including Democratic-led Colorado, have instead faced federal lawsuits over their refusal. Wyoming's decision to hand over the full, unredacted file was not required by the DOJ's request on its face, which cited the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act as its stated authority.

Updates

2026-04-13 — Retired Cheyenne attorney George Powers filed a criminal complaint against Gray over the transfer [2]

Powers, a Cheyenne attorney who spent 40 years practicing law in Wyoming, filed a complaint with Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz alleging Gray "knowingly and willfully violated his statutory duty" to maintain the confidentiality of the voter data, a violation Powers said constitutes both a misdemeanor under state confidentiality law and a felony under the state's election code. Citing "a clear and immediate conflict of interest" because Kautz's office had advised Gray on the transfer, Powers asked that the matter be referred to an independent special prosecutor. Gray called the complaint "nothing more than Trump Derangement Syndrome."

2026-06-16 — Two independent legal reviews declined to bring criminal charges against Gray [3]

A court filing from the Wyoming Attorney General's office stated that two separately arranged legal evaluations of Powers's complaint — one conducted by the Attorney General's office itself behind an internal "Chinese wall," the other by an unnamed private law firm and a county prosecuting attorney — had each independently declined to pursue criminal charges. Powers's attorneys demanded the underlying reports be made public, arguing "justice requires a truly independent review — by someone the Attorney General did not choose."

2026-06-25 — Wyoming Supreme Court declined to order the attorney general's recusal from the Gray investigation [5]

The Wyoming Supreme Court rejected a petition for a writ of mandamus that Powers had filed seeking to force Attorney General Kautz to recuse himself from investigating the complaint against Gray, ruling that Powers had "not cited any 'absolute, clear, and indisputable' law" entitling him to that remedy. The ruling left the underlying dispute over Gray's data transfer unresolved; Powers's attorneys said they were considering next steps.

2026-08-17 — Powers filed a renewed civil suit seeking to bar Gray from further such transfers [4]

Oil City News reported that Powers had filed a civil action against Gray and Attorney General Kautz in Laramie County, asking a Wyoming court to declare that Gray acted outside the scope of his authority and "compromised the statutory privacy rights of Wyoming's registered voters" in making the transfer, and to bar him from doing so again. Gray called the suit, filed shortly before his U.S. House primary, an attempt "to damage his Congressional bid."