By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department is in talks with Homeland Security Investigations about transferring the sensitive voter roll data it has collected from states for use in criminal and immigration-related investigations, according to government documents seen by Reuters.
The voter registration data was gathered over the last several months by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which has sent requests for voter registration-related information to at least 24 states. Of those, the division requested a complete list of all registered voters from at least 22 states, according to a tracker maintained by the Brennan Center for Justice and letters reviewed by Reuters.
Homeland Security Investigations, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, intends to run the voter roll data against other information in its law enforcement databases for use in criminal and immigration probes, documents show. DHS is undergoing a sweeping transformation to become the main hub for vetting domestic intelligence.
Details about how the data will be shared with HSI are still being ironed out, but at least some government lawyers believe the data collected by the Civil Rights Division can be lawfully transferred to HSI because it would be used for civil and criminal investigations, the records show.
The effort combines two issues core to President Donald Trump’s political messaging: Claims unsupported by evidence that the U.S. elections system is rife with fraud, and cracking down on immigration.
Legal experts who spoke with Reuters said sharing such data raises privacy concerns because the Privacy Act requires the government to provide public notice and comment before it collects records on individuals. Sharing the data with HSI would also run counter to what the DOJ told states it wanted to use the data for.
The request for such data “is not normal and it’s not lawful,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who previously worked in the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Rights Section.
In letters to states, the Civil Rights Division said it wanted to review voter rolls for compliance with two federal laws – the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act – which require states to establish programs for maintaining clean voting lists so people ineligible to vote, such as convicted felons or deceased individuals, are purged from the file.
In an August 28 virtual meeting with secretaries of state and their staff, senior Civil Rights Division official Michael Gates said the goal was to use the data to ensure states had achieved clean voter lists, and pledged the department would “securely and discreetly” analyze the data and provide confidential feedback, according to notes on the meeting shared with Reuters by a participant.
A Justice Department spokesperson said that Congress gave the division authority under several different laws to make sure that states allow only eligible people to vote in federal elections.
“The recent request by the Civil Rights Division for state voter rolls is pursuant to that statutory authority, and the responsive data is being screened for ineligible voter entries,” the spokesperson added.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson acknowledged working with the Justice Department on an information-sharing plan, saying the move was aimed at preventing people in the country illegally from “corrupting our republic’s democratic process.”
Gates did not respond to a request for comment.
STATES PUSH BACK
Multiple states refused the Justice Department’s request to hand over voting roll data, saying it lacked a proper legal basis.
“The requests on their face are absolutely unprecedented in scope. Typically, requests from DOJ are far more targeted. This has been set up … as basically a fishing expedition,” said Dax Goldstein, the director for election protection at the States United Democracy Center.
The general counsel of the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, Justin Erickson, told the DOJ in a letter seen by Reuters it did not “identify any legal basis in its June 25 letter that would entitle it to Minnesota’s voter registration list. Nor did it explain how this information would be used, stored, and secured.”
At a July 29 press conference, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows had this response to the request: “Here’s my answer to Trump’s DOJ today: Go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”
Most recently, a local judge in South Carolina ordered the state’s election commission to refrain from handing over voter roll data after a voter challenged the state, saying doing so would violate her privacy.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, criticized that ruling in a post on X, saying her office “will not stand for a state court judge’s hasty nullification of our federal voting laws.”
The DOJ sent follow-up requests demanding more sensitive data, including driver’s license numbers, dates of birth and the last four digits of each voter’s Social Security number, according to one of the letters seen by Reuters. In the follow-up letters, Dhillon said the department had a right to this data under the Civil Rights Act.
That law requires states to retain voter registration records for up to 22 months after an election. Under the law, the Justice Department can issue a written demand to inspect the records, but it must provide “a statement of the basis and the purpose” for the request.
The DOJ has also been engaged in discussions with a different Department of Homeland Security office that operates a program known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, according to government documents seen by Reuters. Historically, that program contained information about non-citizens that states could use to verify the immigration status of people applying for benefits.
DHS has since expanded the data contained in SAVE to include additional types of personal information, and has been using it to verify voter registration lists in multiple states, the documents show.
The data that the Civil Rights Division has collected so far does not contain Social Security numbers, so the SAVE database cannot be used to verify voter registration records. DOJ officials are seeking to use databases run by HSI instead to verify voter registration records, government records seen by Reuters show.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Jana Winter; editing by Scott Malone and Nick Zieminski)
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