Montana Committee Votes to Subpoena Secretary of State Over Voter Data Shared With DOJ

On September 2, 2026, Montana's State Administration and Veterans Affairs interim legislative committee voted 10-1 to subpoena Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, a Republican, seeking details about voter roll data her office provided to the U.S. Department of Justice. The committee, composed of six Republicans and four Democrats, acted with bipartisan support; Sen. Mike Cuffe cast the sole dissenting vote, stating he believed Jacobsen was following the rule of law. Rep. Marc Lee said lawmakers had repeatedly sought this information and been rebuffed prior to the vote. The DOJ had requested unredacted state voter rolls in 2025, and Jacobsen's office subsequently shared voter information with federal officials. The data was uploaded into the SAVE database, where driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers were added as identifiers, according to Montana Free Press. A Montana citizen who requested her own records found that her full name, birth date, addresses, and voting district had been shared with federal officials, per Montana Public Radio. The committee said it intends to use the subpoenaed information to help shape policy on disclosure of confidential citizen data ahead of the 2027 Montana Legislature. Once served, Jacobsen will have 10 days to comply with the subpoena or challenge it in court. As of the reporting, it remains unresolved whether Jacobsen will comply with or contest the subpoena, and the full scope and content of data transferred to the DOJ has not been independently confirmed beyond the examples cited. Details of the DOJ's original request and its intended use of the voter data are not fully disclosed. A separate, unrelated action in Wyoming—where Secretary of State Chuck Gray sent 2,018 voter records matched to driver's licenses as part of a state election-integrity review—shares a topical connection to voter data scrutiny but is not tied to the Montana subpoena or the DOJ request.