reported <\/a>by NPR on April 3.<\/p>\nWhat the DOJ is collecting and why<\/h1>\n
For nearly a year, the Justice Department has been making unprecedented demands for voter registration data from most U.S. states, in some cases extending to party affiliation and voting history. The agency has said it needs the data to ensure states are removing ineligible registrants from voter rolls, and has sued more than two dozen states that have not complied. So far, 17 mostly Republican-led states have handed over their voter rolls. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The DOJ\u2019s voting section chief, Eric Neff, said at a hearing in Rhode Island that the department intends to share the data with DHS and run it through a federal system called SAVE \u2014 an immigration status verification database \u2014 to flag noncitizens and deceased individuals.<\/p>\n
The Privacy Act problem<\/h2>\n
Federal law requires agencies to issue public notices and privacy assessments before collecting or disseminating personally identifiable information for a new purpose. The DOJ has issued neither. The growing U.S. government appetite for aggregating citizen data across agencies \u2014 a concern that has already drawn scrutiny in financial markets, including the digital asset sector \u2014 is now moving into voter data in a way that legal experts say crosses a statutory line. Neff himself acknowledged the compliance gap, saying DOJ has \u201cstill a couple steps we have to go through\u201d before being comfortable \u201crepresenting to this court that we\u2019re in full compliance with the Privacy Act.\u201d Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ\u2019s Civil Rights Division, told NPR the situation is already past that threshold. He said each of the 17 state voter rolls collected \u201crepresents a criminal violation\u201d of the Privacy Act, given the absence of any public process or privacy assessment.<\/p>\n
The broader implications<\/h2>\n
The resignation of Kagle \u2014 whose last published privacy assessment was dated March 20, just two weeks before his departure \u2014 removes the official within the Civil Rights Division whose job it was to produce exactly the kind of documentation the DOJ has skipped. Privacy rights advocates have long argued that financial surveillance and personal data collection by government agencies represent interconnected threats to individual liberty, a position the SEC\u2019s own crypto task force engaged with directly in 2025. The voter data collection comes as the Trump administration continues to elevate claims about election fraud that courts and independent researchers have repeatedly rejected. Whether the data-sharing plan survives legal challenge will depend on how quickly advocacy groups and affected states move to enforce Privacy Act requirements the DOJ has not yet met.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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