Whistleblower alleges DHS voter fraud probe may violate state laws

Federal agents assigned to a Trump administration voter fraud investigation may have violated state laws while searching voter records, according to an anonymous whistleblower disclosure made public Monday by Democratic senators.

The whistleblower, represented by the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund, said Department of Homeland Security personnel were directed to use personally identifiable information to search public-facing state voter websites as part of an initiative called the Unlawful Voter Initiative. Some of those websites require users to attest that they are the voter or have the voter’s permission to access the record.

The disclosure was provided to Sen. Alex Padilla of California and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who released it publicly. DHS did not respond to requests for comment from NPR and The Guardian.

The report says DHS began assigning personnel to the initiative last month and that officers were instructed to compare information in DHS data sets against state voter registration systems. In Virginia, for example, the Department of Elections website requires users to certify that the information used to access a voter registration record is their own or that they are expressly authorized by the voter. The site warns that accessing another voter’s record unlawfully is punishable as computer fraud.

“Employees may be required to use the PII to make false attestations that they are the voter or are acting with the voter’s express authorization, in order to access these individual voters’ records,” the whistleblower report says. “Such false representations would likely violate relevant state law.”

The disclosure says officers raised concerns that the searches could be illegal because they involved misrepresenting themselves as voters. Training materials cited in the report said DHS lawyers had advised that the reviews were permissible as “open-source research” when conducted for adjudicative or investigative responsibilities. According to the disclosure, officers were also told they would not be personally liable for conducting searches as part of their official duties if properly documented.

Lawyers for the whistleblower said that guidance suggested officials were aware the activity could have legal implications. “This leads us to believe that USCIS-FDNS HQ is aware that the activity may be illegal, and yet they are still requiring officers to engage in this illegal activity with promises of personal liability protection,” they wrote.

The whistleblower also alleged problems with the reliability and transparency of the data used in the initiative. In some cases, DHS gave officers a person’s name and specific dates on which the person allegedly registered and voted, but officers found no matching record on state voter registration websites. The disclosure said that without knowing the source and date of the information, officers could not determine its reliability before acting.

The report said the issue was especially significant in California, where officers often could not access the voter registration database. Officers were allegedly told to create files anyway in Tecs, a DHS database used by law enforcement officials to share information. “The result is that a significant number of Tecs records, potentially thousands or tens of thousands, will be created against California residents based on data that an officer may have good reason to believe is unreliable or inaccurate without corroboration,” the disclosure says.

The whistleblower also described pressure on officers to move quickly. According to the report, officers received their first and only training on Aug. 21 and were expected to begin researching four days later. Each officer was assigned a quota of at least five people per hour and 40 per day, leaving about 12 minutes to determine whether someone was a U.S. citizen or could be considered an “unlawful voter.”

Padilla called the allegations “shocking” and said they included “potentially thousands of violations of state law and the use of highly questionable data.” Schumer said DHS was telling officers “to lie to do it.”

The allegations come as the Trump administration has intensified efforts across federal agencies to find and prosecute noncitizens on voter rolls. NPR reported that previous audits have found noncitizen voting to be very rare, while The Guardian reported that the current effort has produced only a handful of cases so far.