An anonymous federal whistleblower alleges that the Department of Homeland Security is requiring federal employees to misrepresent themselves on state voter lookup tools as part of an election-related probe, conduct the disclosure says likely violates state laws. The account warns that unreliable data could lead employees to create federal law enforcement records that wrongly implicate U.S. citizens and potentially prompt further investigation.
The nearly 30-page disclosure about the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” was released Monday by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, the ranking member of a Senate committee overseeing federal elections. The disclosure includes screenshots and transcripts from a DHS training session for a group of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees.
According to the whistleblower, the USCIS employees were forced in late August to suspend their other work, complete less than two hours of training and begin checking DHS-provided lists of individuals against state voter registration systems to identify “unlawful voters.” The account says agents were expected to review 40 people each day, leaving about 12 minutes to determine whether each person was a legal voter and to create a federal record for anyone deemed not to be one.
The whistleblower contends that the initiative combines compressed review periods with data that may not be reliable. The disclosure says DHS information about voters can differ from state records, raising the possibility that findings entered into federal documentation could be inaccurate and affect U.S. citizens.
Padilla and Schumer characterized the initiative Monday as an attempt by President Donald Trump to interfere in elections. They also argued that the short timelines would prevent officials from conducting proper investigations and that discrepancies between DHS data and state records could make federal findings problematic. Those assertions reflect the senators’ assessment of the program; the supplied material does not include a DHS response to the allegations.