Ballots are sorted in Greeley, Colorado, on June 25, 2024 (Andrew Fraieli/Colorado Newsline).
A bunch of Democratic secretaries of state in a letter to prime Trump administration officers say they’re involved the administration misled them about how it will use voter information collected from their states.
The letter, dated Tuesday, is addressed to Pam Bondi, the U.S. legal professional common, and Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety. The Division of Justice, overseen by Bondi, in current months has demanded voter data from quite a few states. The data would permit the DOJ to guage state compliance with federal voting legal guidelines, division officers had mentioned.
However federal officers later acknowledged that the DOJ shared voter roll data with Homeland Safety to look it for noncitizens as a strategy to “scrub aliens from voter rolls.”
The secretaries of their letter categorical “immense concern” about how the knowledge is being shared, and so they “search readability on whether or not DOJ and DHS actively misled election officers relating to the makes use of of voter information.”
The letter is signed by Colorado’s Jena Griswold in addition to Adrian Fontes of Arizona, Shirley Weber of California, Shenna Bellows of Maine, Steve Simon of Minnesota, Francisco Aguilar of Nevada, Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico, Tobias Learn of Oregon, Sarah Copeland Hanzas of Vermont, and Steve Hobbs of Washington.
The secretaries concern Trump officers might misuse the knowledge.
“Is the administration amassing in an unprecedented means mass voter information and dumping it into an untested, unverified federal system to unfold voter disinformation — disinformation to undermine our elections?” Griswold mentioned in an interview with Newsline.
DHS operates Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, which may establish the citizenship standing of an individual. The system will be vulnerable to errors.
“We wish to know what the Trump administration is doing with voter information, and I’m proud to face with 9 different secretaries of state to demand solutions and accountability,” Griswold mentioned. “We in the end wish to know what the Trump administration is doing and whether or not they’re taking applicable steps required beneath the legislation to guard voter data.”
The secretaries of state met with senior DOJ and DHS officers twice, on Aug. 28 and Sept. 11, in accordance with the letter. A DOJ official throughout the first assembly instructed the secretaries the division supposed to make use of voter information “to evaluate compliance with the voter record upkeep provisions of the Assist America Vote Act (HAVA) and the Nationwide Voter Registration Act (NVRA).”
On Sept. 11, Heather Honey, an election conspiracist who’s a Homeland Safety “election integrity” official, instructed the secretaries the division had not requested voter information and had no intention of utilizing it, the letter says.
“The identical day, DHS publicly contradicted her illustration and confirmed that they’d obtained this information and would enter it into the unproven and doubtlessly insecure citizenship-check system, SAVE,” the letter says.
The secretaries request particulars on the sharing of voter information between federal businesses, the safety of the knowledge, and contradictory statements by federal officers. They request a response by Dec. 1.
Sweeping requests for data
The DOJ has despatched requests for voter information to at the very least 40 states, in accordance with the Brennan Middle for Justice. The request to Colorado in Might was among the many most sweeping — it sought “all information” associated to the 2024 election, amongst different data.
In response, Griswold’s workplace equipped two copies of the state’s grasp voter record — one from 2022 and one from Might — and one copy of the grasp voter historical past record courting from after the election in November 2024. The information contains the names of voters, their residential addresses, start yr, and, if offered by the voter, telephone numbers — all public data. It doesn’t embody a voter’s social safety quantity, driver’s license quantity, month and day of start, signature or e-mail deal with.
Different states, together with Maine, refused handy over any data. New Hampshire’s Republican secretary of state David Scanlan, citing a state prohibition, mentioned he wasn’t approved to supply the DOJ along with his state’s voter roll.
The voter information requests are simply one in every of some ways the Trump administration has “made our elections much less safe,” she mentioned.
In March, Trump issued an government order that, although a court docket has blocked key elements of it, would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of People if it had been carried out, in accordance with voter advocates. The administration has dismantled federal entities that had labored to help election safety or counter international election disinformation. It’s making an attempt to remove mail-in ballots.
It’s making an attempt to free Tina Peters, the election-denying former Colorado county clerk who’s serving a jail time period for her position in a scheme to breach the safety of her personal election gear.
“I do suppose it’s essential for elected officers to face up at any time when they will,” Griswold mentioned. “It’s all these small conditions that develop on prime of one another, and we will’t ignore what’s taking place at massive. And on this scenario, I’m proud that 10 of us are coming collectively and saying we demand solutions from Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem to shine mild on regardless of the Trump administration is doing with this information.”
This story was initially printed by Colorado Newsline, a States Newsroom affiliate.