Dem
47
GOP
53
As we have written before, the Department of Justice has launched an all-out effort to collect voter information from every state. More than two dozen states have refused, since states run elections, not the federal government, and the data the DoJ wants is private information that voters might not want shared with the feds. In response, "AG" Pam Bondi sued the states that wouldn't cooperate.
The states argue that there's no legitimate reason to demand voter data and the DoJ hasn't done anything to suggest otherwise, since the administration won't explain why it wants the data. So far, federal courts in California, Oregon, and Michigan have dismissed the lawsuits as "unprecedented and illegal." Last Thursday, two hearings were held, one in Rhode Island and one in Maine, in the suits against those states. In the Rhode Island case, the DoJ's lawyer admitted that the voter data will be shared with DHS. And in Maine, DoJ lawyer James Tucker said that the voter data could be "checked" against federal databases.
This is illegal for a couple of reasons. First, the database Tucker was referring to is called SAVE, is housed in U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, and is used to determine non-citizen eligibility for federal programs. That is, it was, until Trump and company decided it would be a great foundation for a national database to collect information on U.S. residents. According to NPR, SAVE has been revamped as a "citizenship lookup tool." To do that, the database is now linked to Social Security Administration data and the State Department's U.S. Passport data. The problem is that they are accessing this sensitive information in violation of the Privacy Act, which has strict requirements before agencies can share such information.
Second, the Trump administration wants to run every state's voter roll through this database to ostensibly ensure that each voter is a U.S. citizen. But states already do that, and non-citizen voting is not an issue. In the rare cases where a non-citizen has registered, it is usually a mistake and the person has not actually cast a ballot. And the tradeoff is that the SAVE database frequently ensnares U.S. citizens and erroneously flags them for removal from voter rolls. Some states, like Texas, have voluntarily handed over their voter rolls to be run through SAVE and fired off letters to anyone flagged as a non-citizen. It is then up to the voter who was improperly flagged to prove they're a citizen in order to stay registered. So far in Texas 2,724 people have been identified as "potential non-citizens." And more than 47 million voters' data have been run through SAVE. And Trump wants to expand SAVE to include driver's license information from Nlets, a private company that works with law enforcement to share the data across states.
Judges have so far consistently held that the DoJ doesn't have the right to access this information and that the collection of voter data is likely illegal. But no one has brought a challenge to the new and improved SAVE database that is drawing on sensitive data on Americans from across the federal government. As Minnesota's Secretary of State Steve Simon notes:
I don't think most people, most Americans, think that if they give to an elections administrator for voter registration purposes, sensitive data like a full or partial Social Security number, that it's going to end up in some sort of giant omnibus database in Washington, D.C., that can be easily shared with God knows who for God knows what reason. And that is apparently what is going on here.
It looks like House Democrats can add another item to their growing list of oversight hearings if and when they regain the majority. (L)