A coalition of 10 top state election officials sent a letter on Tuesday pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over whether their agencies had been forthcoming about their use of private voter data.
“We write to express our immense concern with recent reporting that the Department of Justice (D.O.J.) has shared voter data with the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.), and to seek clarity on whether D.O.J. and D.H.S. actively misled election officials regarding the uses of voter data,” the secretaries of state, who are all Democrats, write.
The secretaries follow with a list of questions demanding further information from both departments. They ask whether the Justice Department had “shared, or does it intend to share, information from voter files” with any other federal agency, and whether the Homeland Security Department had received information about voters from other sources.
The Justice Department has embarked on an effort to compile the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, to essentially establish a national voting database. The push, which is meant in part to bolster unsubstantiated claims by President Trump and his allies that large numbers of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally, has worried election officials and voting rights experts who say the data could be used to try to discredit future election results.
Nearly every request for the private data was initially rebuffed by top state election officials, who said they needed more information on how the list would be used, leading the Justice Department to sue at least eight states this year.
In the letter, the election officials cite what they view as potentially contradictory information. They state that Heather Honey, a top election official at the Homeland Security Department and previously a leader of the right-wing election activist movement, told a private gathering of secretaries of state that the department “had not received voter data or requested it” and “had no intention of using voter data.”
The letter continues, “The same day, D.H.S. publicly contradicted her representation and confirmed that they had received this data” and would put it through a program the agency developed that checks immigration status.
The secretaries of state also recounted a meeting in August with a top Justice Department official, who told them that the department “intended to use voter information to assess compliance” with the rules for maintaining federal voter lists.
“The first step to repair any relationship with the federal government is clear and transparent communication,” Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state in Colorado and one of the officials who signed the letter, said in an interview. She criticized many of the administration’s actions regarding elections, arguing that they “make our elections less secure and decrease the level of confidence and trust from Democratic secretaries of state with federal counterparts who used to be trusted partners.”
“We’ll have to see what they say,” she said. “At this point, we want answers.”
Representatives for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Since Mr. Trump’s return to office, secretaries of state and other top election officials have confronted significant changes to the relationship between the federal government and states regarding elections.
Beginning in February, as part of sweeping federal cuts made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump administration eliminated programs that had helped election officials coordinate cybersecurity plans and communicate regarding potential threats. The administration has also placed right-wing election activists like Ms. Honey in critical election positions in the federal government.
At the same time, both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have made repeated attempts to obtain the private information of voters kept by states on their voter rolls. This information includes partial social security numbers and driver’s license numbers, information not available on publicly available voter rolls.
And in March, Mr. Trump issued an executive order seeking to require proof of citizenship to register to vote, the return of all mail ballots by Election Day and other changes.
That effort, however, was largely blocked by the courts.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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