As DOJ prepares to share state voter data with DHS, a key privacy officer resigns

The Justice Department has been trying to force states to hand over sensitive voter data that it plans to share with the Department of Homeland Security. Elections The Justice Department plans to share sensitive voter data with Homeland Security Kilian Kagle was the chief FOIA officer and senior component official for privacy for DOJ's Civil Rights Division before leaving his post in recent days. His resignation has not been previously reported. Elections Trump's DOJ makes its most sweeping demand for election data yet In some cases, like in California, the demands went further, to include party affiliation and voting history. The agency has said it needs this data to ensure states are performing voter list maintenance and removing ineligible registrants. DOJ has sued more than two dozen states that have not turned over their voter lists. The Justice Department's efforts to acquire this voter data come as the Trump administration is investigating 2020 election results and continues to elevate unfounded conspiracy theories about the prevalence of election fraud, which has been shown to be rare. Last week, Eric Neff, acting chief of the Justice Department's voting section, said at a hearing in Rhode Island that his agency's intent is to share state voter roll data with the Department of Homeland Security and run it through a DHS data system called SAVE to check for noncitizens and deceased individuals on the rolls. Politics The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system While the DOJ's cases are still pending in most states, federal judges in California, Oregon and Michigan have so far dismissed the DOJ's demands for sensitive state voter data, finding that the federal government was not entitled to the records under the law. Under the Constitution, states administer their own elections, and voter data has always belonged to the states. In the California case, U.S. District Judge David Carter specifically noted in his January ruling that DOJ's demand violated various federal privacy laws, as well as California state privacy law, a concern that has also been raised by states and privacy experts. "The Department of Justice has no legal authority to maintain a massive database of state voter records in the first place," said John Davisson, deputy director and director of enforcement at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit dedicated to privacy rights. "It's an unlawful and inexcusable abuse of sensitive voter data, and no amount of artful paperwork can fix that. Still, it's telling that DOJ hasn't even gone through the motions yet of publishing basic privacy documentation required by law," Davisson said. So far, 17 mostly Republican-led states have turned over their voter rolls to the Justice Department, according to the agency. Federal privacy laws require such documents before a federal agency collects or disseminates personal, identifiable information about the public for a new purpose. The documents are typically issued in collaboration with the agency or division's designated privacy officer. Kagle declined NPR's request to comment but confirmed he had recently resigned. He issued a privacy impact assessment for an unrelated DOJ case management database as recently as March 20. The Justice Department is trying to get access to voter rolls in Wisconsin and many other states. He also said there are security concerns with how the federal government would store this volume of sensitive information and protect it from a data breach. U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy asked Neff during the hearing what DHS would be able to do with the state voter data DOJ plans to share. "So not for ICE going to people's homes and arresting them; right?" she asked. Elections Trump signs a new executive order on voting. Experts say he lacks the authority Separately, an executive order that President Trump signed this week to limit mail-in voting tasks DHS with coming up with a list of eligible voters in each state, though many legal experts expect the order will be blocked by federal courts. Many career employees have left DOJ's Civil Rights Division during this administration, and Kagle is also part of a growing number of privacy and FOIA experts from around the federal government who have left their posts. Davisson of EPIC called it an "exodus," citing both cuts and people who chose to leave. The former chief data officer of the Social Security Administration, Charles Borges, became a whistleblower and resigned out of concern about data practices by Department of Government Efficiency staffers with sensitive Social Security data. Since Borges' departure, the agency announced that two former DOGE staffers were referred to a watchdog for possible Hatch Act violations after the agency discovered they communicated with a political advocacy group about matching Social Security numbers with voter roll data in an attempt to find evidence of voter fraud. Politics The government is investigating new claims that DOGE misused Social Security data Last month, the agency's inspector general told members of Congress it was reviewing an anonymous complaint with new allegations that a former DOGE employee potentially misused Social Security data. Sponsor Message Become an NPR sponsor