WASHINGTON, D.C. — A coalition of voting rights advocates and individual voters has sued the Trump administration after the U.S. Department of Justice sought confidential voter information from every state and Washington, D.C., prompting allegations that the federal government is attempting to create a national voter database that could be used to surveil and purge eligible voters.
The American Civil Liberties Union reported Tuesday that Common Cause and four individual members filed suit to block what they describe as an unlawful effort by the Department of Justice to collect and centralize millions of Americans’ private voter records.
According to the ACLU, the DOJ has demanded confidential voter information from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and is compiling that information into a single record system. At least 12 states, including Louisiana and Mississippi, have voluntarily complied with those requests.
Common Cause argues that the executive order underpinning the data collection effort relies on flawed federal databases that courts and government auditors have repeatedly found unreliable for determining voter eligibility.
The Social Security Administration database, according to Common Cause, cannot verify more than 140 million citizens through its records alone. The agency has also stated that its citizenship records “merely represent a snapshot” of a person’s status at the time they interacted with the agency and that it is “not the agency responsible for making citizenship determinations.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known as SAVE, was created to verify immigration status for benefits eligibility, not to identify U.S. citizens, the lawsuit contends. A North Carolina audit found that 97.6% of people flagged by SAVE as noncitizens were, in fact, citizens.
Plaintiffs argue that using those systems to manage voter rolls would inevitably disenfranchise eligible Americans.
The four individual plaintiffs — Anthony Nel, Haley Smith, Linda Duckworth and Ruth Nasrullah — are U.S. citizens who live in states that turned over voter roll data to the Justice Department, according to the filing.
Courthouse News Service described Nel’s case as an example of the alleged risks. Nel, a Texas resident, was informed that the SAVE system had identified him as a noncitizen and was told to provide proof of citizenship within 30 days or lose his voter registration. He was unable to renew his expired passport in time, and his registration was canceled. Common Cause says he remains concerned he could again be deemed ineligible.
The plaintiffs are represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the ACLU, Protect Democracy, the ACLU of the District of Columbia, and the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.
The lawsuit alleges the DOJ’s actions usurp the authority of states to oversee elections and maintain voter rolls under the Constitution and federal law. It further argues that the federal government’s plan could prevent eligible voters from casting ballots because the databases being used are inaccurate and unreliable.
Plaintiffs also contend the administration ignored safeguards required under federal law before collecting sensitive personal information from the public.
Common Cause warned that a centralized voter database would create serious cybersecurity risks while also opening the door to governmental abuse.
The organization said such a database could be used to conduct widespread voter purges or be transferred to another entity such as DOGE. It also warned that, given the Department of Homeland Security’s treatment of immigrants and communities of color, the risks of misuse are even greater.
Ming Cheung, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, said, “The Department of Justice is entrusted with protecting the fundamental right to vote — not exploiting its position to get its hands on sensitive voter data without justification.”
According to Courthouse News Service, the DOJ has also sued the District of Columbia and 30 states that resisted the data demands in full, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.
Nikhel Sus, chief counsel at CREW, said, “This effort to consolidate millions of Americans’ confidential voter data in a master federal database is part of a larger illegal scheme to take over states’ constitutional roles and federalize election administration.”
Cheung added, “We are filing this lawsuit because these actions cross a dangerous line, threatening both the privacy of millions of Americans and public trust in our elections. No administration is above the law.”
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