League of Women Voters Sues DHS Over Alleged Unlawful Collection of Sensitive Voter Data

The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, alleging the department unlawfully collected sensitive voter data, including Social Security numbers, from Kentucky and five other states and prepared to feed it into an immigration enforcement system.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 15 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

, accuses Homeland Security Investigations of going around court rulings that had blocked similar demands for voter information, according to coverage by the Louisville Courier Journal and the Kentucky Lantern.

According to the lawsuit, a July report from Homeland Security Investigations said voter files from Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico, Connecticut and Georgia had been “enriched” by the department’s Innovation Lab, a unit first launched in 2019 that HSI describes as its “centralized hub for the development of new advanced analytics capabilities, tools and enhanced business processes.”

What the lawsuit claims

The complaint cites internal DHS emails and memos obtained through records requests.

It says whistleblower reports show the “enrichment” efforts have let DHS keep highly sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, even when statewide voter registration lists would not reveal that information. The enriched lists do not include citizenship data and are not limited to voters suspected of being noncitizens, the lawsuit says.

An internal email dated May 26 said the Innovation Lab’s “processing focuses on DOJ voting rolls and USCIS data,” and that “coordination with iLab continues, particularly on ingesting processed voter roll data into the ELITE enforcement system,” with the goal of improving lead management, analytical review and investigative tracking.

According to the lawsuit, ELITE is a tool built by the technology company Palantir

that DHS uses to identify, “and in some cases locate,” targets for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. A July 6 HSI report described “iLab State Processing” and said Kentucky’s voter files had “been enriched by the iLab.” The lawsuit also pairs the memo with a federal whistleblower disclosure that said DHS employees were told additional voter data would be added through “supplemental magic.”

Background: a dismissed DOJ case

The filing comes months after a Justice Department lawsuit seeking unredacted information on Kentucky voters was dismissed on July 23, after Kentucky and other states refused to hand over voter data containing confidential information. Afterward, the Justice Department said Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams was “under investigation” for not complying with federal demands for sensitive voter data.

“We see this as an attempt to work around what courts have found is a violation of the Privacy Act,” said Marcia Johnson of the National League of Women Voters. She added that if voting data is used by immigration enforcement agents, it could have a chilling effect at the polls in November:

“I could be a citizen, I could be eligible, but I could be concerned about being prevented from voting.”

A spokesperson for Adams’ office said the office is not a party to the lawsuit and that Kentucky’s voter rolls have not been improperly accessed or altered. The office said it does not know whether the federal government developed its own voter file, but that it would not affect Kentucky’s elections even if it had.

Reporting based on coverage by the Louisville Courier Journal and the Kentucky Lantern.