Protect Democracy, CDT, and the Leadership Conference release new analysis of federal efforts to access voter data

In the Trump administration’s latest effort to gain unprecedented access to sensitive personal information on millions of people nationwide, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has demanded access to at least 40 states’ voter files, which often contain sensitive personal information such as social security and driver’s license numbers. States are responsible for maintaining these files as part of their constitutional authority to administer elections and state officials from across the political spectrum have previously defended this data from federal demands.

The DOJ’s demands for this data are likely connected to the administration’s efforts to investigate unfounded claims of widespread non-citizen voting by matching state voter registration data with federal immigration datasets using the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. The DOJ’s demands for state voter data have occurred in parallel with DHS’s efforts to repurpose the SAVE system as a tool for verifying voter eligibility by expanding the system to include additional sensitive data on all American citizens, including social security data. While framed as a measure to enhance election integrity, the use of the SAVE system to verify voter eligibility could lead to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and perpetuate false narratives that erode trust in elections.

The administration’s efforts to lay claim to this data are also part of a larger government-wide effort to collect and aggregate unprecedented amounts of sensitive information on all people living in the United States. In addition to state voter files, the administration has demanded that states share sensitive data from public benefits programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) Program and Medicaid. These moves raise urgent privacy and cybersecurity concerns, could fuel government surveillance, and contribute to decreased trust in government and democratic processes. 

In our explainer, How Federal Efforts to Access Voter Data Affect Our Privacy, Civil Liberties, and Democracy, published in collaboration with Center for Democracy and Technology and the Leadership Conference’s Center for Civil Rights and Technology, we examine the types of sensitive data contained in state voter files, current and past efforts to access voter registration data, the recent expansion of the SAVE system as a tool for voter eligibility verification, the legal landscape surrounding DOJ’s demands for state voter registration data, and the potential harms associated with the Trump administration’s latest privacy-invasive actions.