The Louisiana Secretary of State accuses the DOJ Voting Section of using litigation to extract data which will be used by third party groups for political partisan advantage, naturally for Democrats. The U.S. Justice Department is suing the state for access to voter data in an attempt to turn the state from red to blue, Secretary of State Tom Schedler told a meeting of Baton Rouge Republicans on Tuesday. Schedler said Eric Holder’s office was acting “like the Gestapo” in requesting registration information. The suit, U.S. v. Schedler et al was filed in 2011 and claims that Schedler, in his position as chief elections administrator, was not ensuring some Louisianians who visited public assistance offices were given the opportunity to register to vote, as required by federal law. Soon after, the NAACP and Project Vote, an advocacy group, filed a similar lawsuit. While those groups won their case in the state Supreme Court, Schedler’s office is still dealing with the DOJ suit. As part of the suit, Holder’s office requested that data on 2.9 million Louisiana be sent to the federal government as part of the discovery process. The requested information included social security numbers, dates of birth and mothers’ maiden names, Schedler said. “This (suit) was about sharing information for other purposes,” Schedler said at the monthly Reagan Newsmaker Luncheon held Tuesday at a Baton Rouge restaurant. “This is more about turning Louisiana from red state, purple state, blue state than it has anything to do with this suit.” Schedler said two state statutes and six federal laws preclude him from releasing this information, but that he would be against giving it to the federal government even if he could. Moreover, he speculates the DOJ data request is part and parcel of other recent efforts by the federal government to gather information on private citizens, such as the NSA’s data mining efforts and IRS’ attempts to investigate conservative political groups. “They’re like the Gestapo, quite frankly,” Schedler said of the Justice Department. “They come in like Keystone Cops with a gun to your head.”