Department of Homeland Security agents looking for “voter fraud” have been digging through state voter databases that are designed to be used only by voters, often logging in by pretending to be a voter and probably breaking state laws, according to a whistleblower report released Monday. What’s more, the agents frequently use unreliable or outdated information, likely flagging eligible voters who are US citizens and dumping them into a database of suspected fraudulent voters.
The New York Times report (gift link) makes clear that, like everything else the Trump administration does, it’s a sloppy, slapdash effort. The whistleblower report says agents are supposed to examine at least 40 voters’ records every day, giving agents an average of just 12 minutes to review each voter’s data and voting record. The agents then cross-check the voter’s information with buggy, incomplete records and must determine whether the person they’re looking at is an upstanding citizen or a dirty foreigner voting illegally.
The consequence of the investigation is potentially vast, according to the account, because each review is recorded in a database that could affect individuals’ immigration status or legal permanent residency.
The whole farcical exercise is driven by Donald Trump’s obsession with illegal noncitizen voting, which study after study shows is extremely rare, with only a handful of incidents in any given election. Despite the lack of evidence, it’s a matter of faith for Trump and everyone who watches Fox News that millions and millions of noncitizens vote, which is the only reason Democrats ever win elections anywhere. That’s why Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pulled hundreds of DHS agents from their regular jobs so they can dig through voting rolls and try to scare up “proof” of those nonexistent millions of noncitizen voters.
It doesn’t really matter to Trump whether anything the investigation finds holds up to scrutiny. It also doesn’t matter if eligible voters are kept from voting in this year’s midterms. What’s important is ginning up an excuse to proclaim the elections illegitimate if they don’t go his way.
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The whistleblower report was released Monday by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who included the full report in a letter to Mullin, demanding answers about the issues raised by the whistleblower. By way of an “answer,” DHS issued a robotic statement giving Schumer and Padilla 30 seconds to drop their weapons and comply:
Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation.
The whistleblower’s statement explains that the DHS goons are instructed to sign into state voter databases by posing as individual voters, using personally identifiable information like birthdates, driver license numbers, or the ol’ last four digits of a Social Security number to gain access. Probably illegal as fuck, as the Times explains.
The agents plugged those names and personal data into public-facing state websites to find a subject’s voter history. Some states, such as Virginia, declare explicitly that only individual voters may use the search tool to look up their own records. Others, such as California, require specific information such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number in an effort to limit the use of the tool to individuals.
DHS helpfully explained to the agents that they needn’t worry about a doing a little identity theft because they were on Official Business and probably won’t face punishment, certainly not under Great Leader. It reassured them in an internal memo that agents “are not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented.” Just make sure you don’t forget the cover sheet.
DHS’s statement said there’s no privacy problems here, because they already know who the bad guys are, insisting, “The Department accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems. […] It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.”
Of course, that stuff about “known aliens in our systems” includes a lot of outdated information about people who used to be noncitizens — legally here on a visa or with a green card — but later became naturalized citizens, and therefore eligible to vote. DHS keeps records of those folks’ “alien identification numbers” on file forever, but the agency isn’t required to update them after people become citizens. As the Times rather patiently points out, “If the investigation is using the existence of an alien number to flag that a voter is ineligible, many legal citizens are likely to be improperly ensnared as unlawful voters.”
That’s literally the problem that has led to multiple publicity-grabbing “reports” by Republican state officials who pretend they’ve found thousands or even tens of thousands of “potentially illegal” voters: They announce a huge number of scary “fraudulent” voters, get big headlines, and then further investigation shows they were just comparing current voter rolls to old state records (usually driver’s license applications) that listed people as noncitizens — but were never updated when those people were naturalized.
Sometimes we think a lot of rightwingers simply choose not to understand how linear time works.
The Times also points out that agents are told to cross-check voter rolls against other very squirrelly “source data,” resulting in more potentially fucked up labeling of legitimate voters as fraudsters:
Agents were given little to no information about where the source data originated; at one point, D.H.S. officials said some immigration information had been added to their source data using “supplemental magic,” according to the whistle-blower account.
Golly, it’s getting to where you can’t use a whimsical description for dubious claims without the media calling you dishonest. (Our bet is that the “supplemental magic” verbiage originated with those witty children from DOGE. It just sounds like them.)
We did find one real surprise in the Times report: The whistleblower suggested that many agents are worried that, by flagging citizens as potential fraudulent voters based on shitty data, they might actually be committing the federal crime of “falsification of records,” notwithstanding DHS’s assurance that it’s all legal if you’re just following orders.
Agents who came to believe the source data was faulty grew reluctant to flag individuals based on that data, the whistle-blower said.
“In other words,” the report says, “the current process is knowingly sweeping known U.S. citizens in as potentially ‘unlawful voters.’”
Let’s not go overboard and accuse these DHS goons of having pangs of conscience about potentially ruining people’s lives. But if fear of getting caught makes them reluctant to falsely accuse innocent people, that’s at least a partial deterrent to Trump’s election fuckery.
[NYT (gift link) / NYT (also gift link) / DHS Whistleblower report]
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So I'm guessing all Hispanic sounding names get auto-flagged.
And if they happen to have a Juan Garcia from Arizona on file as an alien, all Juan Garcias within Arizona get flagged as illegal voters.
The Right was never anti-government. That was a lie. They were anti-democracy.