Federal agents may have broken state laws during a wide-ranging campaign to track down unlawfully registered voters, a federal whistleblower alleges. The anonymous whistleblower is represented by the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund, which recently supplied a report on the account to Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California. Padilla and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer made the report public on Monday. According to the document, the Department of Homeland Security began deploying personnel last month for what it termed the Unlawful Voter Initiative. Enlisted federal agents started scanning voter rolls by entering personally identifiable information into public-facing state websites to check individual voting histories. The report warns that employees may be required to use personal data to make false attestations that they are the voter or have express authorization from the voter, actions that likely violate state laws such as those in Virginia. The whistleblower believes that thousands of state law violations may have already occurred under the direction of headquarters leadership. The Office of Chief Counsel at DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reportedly issued guidance stating that federal agents could use state voter websites for investigative purposes. Training materials included in the report note that the voter data set contained inconsistent information and that officers faced tight quotas of reviewing at least five subjects per hour and forty per day, allowing only twelve minutes to determine citizenship status. This initiative aligns with an administration push across multiple federal agencies to locate and prosecute noncitizens on state voter rolls ahead of November’s Election Day, despite previous audits showing noncitizen voting is extremely rare. Senators Padilla and Schumer have written to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow demanding that they halt the initiative immediately to protect eligible voters and prevent administrative disruption.
Source: npr.org
