Voting and Privacy Groups Sue DHS Over Voter Files From at Least 47 States
Washington — The League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) filed a lawsuit on October 15 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. According to the Associated Press, the 42-page complaint alleges that DHS has obtained voter registration files from at least 47 states and handled the data in a way that violates federal law. The groups are represented by Democracy Forward and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
The complaint says DHS obtained the files even though 30 states had refused to hand over their voter lists. The plaintiffs allege the records may contain sensitive personal information including Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, voting histories and party affiliations, and that DHS combined voter records with information purchased from commercial data brokers. Citing internal government records, the plaintiffs say that as of June 2026, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) had ingested 50.6 million records obtained through the Department of Justice and another 48.4 million records from other sources, covering most of the nation's roughly 174 million registered voters.
The plaintiffs ask the court to declare the government's collection of voter data illegal, block the policy, and order DHS to delete the voter information it has collected and stop using it. According to the Associated Press, DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The case is League of Women Voters et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security et al.
The suit is the latest development in the voter-data dispute. As previously reported, a federal judge on October 9 vacated the Justice Department's nationwide policy of collecting state voter rolls and comparing them with a federal immigration database, and federal courts have repeatedly dismissed the department's separate lawsuits seeking full voter lists from multiple states.
(Sources: Associated Press report of October 15; League of Women Voters statement of October 15)
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Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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