ELECTIONSDOJ Is Sharing State Voter Roll Lists with Homeland Security
All studies of the subject have conclusively shown that the number of illegal liens voting in U.S. election is vanishingly small (these studies also hasten to add that the term “vanishingly small” exaggerates the number of illegal liens trying to vote). Still, DOJ demanded states turn over the lists. Homeland Security says it will comb through for “illegal aliens.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is sharing state voter roll information with the Department of Homeland Security in a search for noncitizens, the Trump administration confirmed.
The data sharing comes after Justice Department attorneys this summer demanded that election officials in nearly two dozen states turn over their voter lists, alarming some Democratic state secretaries of state and election experts. They have voiced fears about how the Trump administration planned to use the data. Even some Republican secretaries of state have declined to provide their full voter lists.
Homeland Security in an unsigned statement to Stateline called information sharing essential to “scrub aliens from voter rolls” and said the federal government was “finally doing what it should have all along — sharing information to solve problems.”
“This collaboration with the DOJ will lawfully and critically enable DHS to prevent illegal aliens from corrupting our republic’s democratic process and further ensure the integrity of our elections nationwide. Elections exist for the American people to choose their leaders, not illegal aliens,” the statement reads.
The Justice Department said in its own statement that state voter roll data provided in response to requests from the department’s Civil Rights Division is “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
Noncitizen voting is extremely rare. One study of the 2016 election placed the prevalence of noncitizen voting at 0.0001% of votes cast.
The data sharing marks a next step in President Donald Trump’s efforts to exert more federal influence over state-administered elections. Trump signed an executive order earlier this year that sought to require individuals to provide proof-of-citizenship documents to register to vote, a rule quickly blocked in federal court. He has also threatened to sign another executive order attempting to restrict mail ballots.
At least 10 states have either provided publicly available data or given the department directions on how to request public data. On Friday, Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales, a Republican, confirmed to reporters that he had provided the Justice Department with all voter information requested, including driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers — making Indiana the first known state to have supplied personally sensitive data.
While the administration didn’t describe how Homeland Security will use the voter rolls to search for noncitizens, the agency operates a powerful program, Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, that can identify the immigration or citizenship status of an individual.
