Indiana Citizen sues for access to list of voters sent to federal government for citizenship check

The Indiana Citizen, a nonprofit news outlet, is suing Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Secretary of State Diego Morales over a list of voters they sent to the federal government last year.

Rokita and Morales asked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to verify the citizenship status of more than 585,000 registered voters last October.

The list included those who registered to vote without providing a driver’s license number or Social Security number; registered voters located overseas; and those who registered simply without a driver’s license number. And the request included those voters’ names and birth dates.

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The Indiana Citizen sought access to the list last year under the state’s public records law. The previous Indiana Public Access Counselor said earlier this year that Rokita and Morales should share the information. And the lawsuit said the attorney general’s office had agreed to give the Citizen some access to the list.

But the Citizen said Rokita’s office then rescinded that access and asked the new Public Access Counselor to reconsider the original opinion. That’s prompted the lawsuit, filed in Marion County court.

The Indiana Citizen is an IPR underwriter.

Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.