The Trump administration sued 47 states for illegally collecting sensitive voter information
A lawsuit alleges that DHS collected voter records from 47 states and combined them with commercial data sets, violating federal privacy guarantees.
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Justice Department indictments target non-citizen voter fraud in Minnesota, as Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter joins "Saturday in America" to discuss the allegations. McCotter reveals that federal prosecutors have charged 50 people with voting crimes in the past month. The Justice Department is also appealing a Florida federal judge's ruling that declared a federal law barring noncitizens from voting unconstitutional.
The Trump administration has been sued over its efforts to collect and analyze sensitive voter data from across the country.
The suit, filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleges that the Department of Homeland Security obtained voter records from at least 47 states and handled the data in a way that violated federal law.
The lawsuit alleges that DHS's confidential investigation of voter data, which includes a policy of combining it with commercial data sets, violates federal safeguards and the privacy rights of millions of Americans.
The case, brought by the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the League of United Latin American Citizens, is the latest legal challenge to President Donald Trump's efforts to crack down on non-citizen voting.
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The president has claimed that he has repeatedly argued that non-citizen voting is a serious threat to the integrity of elections, although studies and follow-ups have found documented cases of non-citizen voting to be rare.
The administration has repeatedly sought a greater federal role in voter eligibility and election administration, areas that have traditionally been largely controlled by the states under the Constitution and federal law.
Federal courts have repeatedly rejected government efforts to compel states to provide voter information.
The new lawsuit alleges that the government has obtained and processed voter records from at least 47 states, even though officials in 30 states have already denied federal requests to provide voter information.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the government's collection of voter information illegal, block DHS's policy and order the agency to delete and not use voter information it has already obtained.
The lawsuit comes less than three weeks before Election Day, as the administration continues to pressure states that they are not doing enough to purge noncitizens from their voter rolls.
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The state sued California election officials Thursday, arguing they failed to act quickly enough to review names the federal government has identified as "probably" noncitizens. The Justice Department asked a judge to block the state from counting those people's mail-in ballots unless their eligibility is confirmed.
California's secretary of state's office said it was given just 48 hours to review about 20,000 names and said the federal government had not provided substantial evidence or methodology to support its claims.
However, the Justice Department's complaint says USCIS conducted a "multi-agency, multi-level review" and determined with "high confidence" that approximately 20,000 people on California's voter rolls are likely noncitizens.
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