An internal email shows the White House urged agencies to speed review of voter rolls DHS obtained from at least 47 states. DHS's search for potential noncitizen voters produced false-positive leads, including U.S. citizens; officials also struggled to meet targets.
The Sept. 1 email says DHS supplemented redacted public voter rolls with personal data bought from Accurint, then matched them against records from ICE, USCIS, the State Department and Social Security Administration. Officials said missing details made some matches difficult; leads included citizens with names similar to immigrants and U.S. citizens born abroad. The email said DHS had only “some degree of confidence” that flagged people were noncitizens who had registered and/or voted.
Hundreds of USCIS officers were reassigned for at least three weeks beginning in August; a target of vetting five names an hour was rarely met, according to people familiar with the effort. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said 1,620 cases were under investigation. Reuters found states may have added more than 30,000 noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 through software glitches and clerical errors, but how many voted was unclear; experts said the total was too small to affect elections relative to 170 million registered voters. The White House said potential cases would be pursued; DHS said its work was lawful.
