Homeland Security is withdrawing its plan to obtain data on postal voters

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is temporarily withdrawing a plan to collect data on millions of Americans who vote by mail as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting.

In a federal one Court records On Monday evening, the Justice Department significantly hedged its bet on the data sharing plan, backing away from a position taken by the Trump administration progressive last week. Justice Department lawyers now view the idea as being in its early stages and contingent on approval of a recent U.S. Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots. They are citing a memo that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin signed the previous Monday.

“The Secretary authorized DHS to continue preliminary discussions with the USPS regarding possible data sharing arrangements. Should the USPS complete its rulemaking process, we will consider working to advance possible coordination to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law and privacy protections,” the statement said.

Mullins’ memo, Monday’s court filing said, “more accurately reflects the administration’s current policy regarding implementation” of the executive order, reversing a Friday observe It says Homeland Security is “considering” working to “integrate” the Postal Service’s voter data to accomplish this Monitor flow of mail-in ballots and identify possible fraud. Friday’s filing said Homeland Security would operate the information to generate investigative leads.

Trump’s March 31st Implementing regulation Requires states to submit lists of potential absentee voters to the Postal Service if they wish to have ballots delivered and directs Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age citizens in each state. The order is being litigated by several lawsuits ahead of the November midterm elections, but has not yet been stayed by a federal judge.

Trump signed the executive order amid an ongoing campaign to influence how states conduct federal elections. According to the U.S. Constitution, states conduct elections. While Congress can issue regulations, the President has no unilateral decision-making authority.

Trump has long attacked mail-in voting and has also pushed the idea that non-citizen voting is widespread. In reality it is extremely occasional.

Democrats and voting rights groups Say the command represents an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to assert authority over elections. They also argue that the order threatens the independence of the Postal Service, which is overseen by a board of governors rather than the president.

Time is running out

Michael McNulty, policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said the Justice Department’s second notice almost seemed to indicate that a court will block the Postal Service’s recent rule that would require states that send ballots by mail to provide voter lists.

“It looks like they have definitely rolled back the USPS data exchange language,” McNulty said in an interview.

Downplaying the current impact of the rule could be part of a legal strategy to protect the administration from legal challenges.

Despite a series of legal challenges, the Trump administration has urged judges not to block the March order because federal officials have not taken major action to implement it – making the lawsuits premature. This argument will become increasingly challenging to sustain as the Postal Service advances New rules for postal ballots and Homeland Security begins taking action.

David Becker, a former attorney with the Justice Department’s voting rights division who directs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said that since the start of the second Trump administration, the Justice Department has tried to “bid the clock” on legal challenges until it is too slow for the courts to act or legal action would cause chaos.

As Trump and his aides speak publicly about the alleged threat posed by non-citizens voting, the Justice Department is trying in court to downplay the extent of the federal government’s actions to implement the order, Becker explained.

“So I think the government is trying to do both,” Becker said. “The government is trying to please an audience, which is the president, while at the same time trying to play this game with the court so that the court might not rule against them and they might say a case is not ready.”

In response to questions from the state’s newsroom, Homeland Security said in an unidentified statement that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within DHS, is “lawfully implementing” the executive order.

“President Trump has made clear: Nothing is more fundamental than the integrity and security of our elections,” the statement said.

Search for voter lists

The Trump administration has spent the past year An attempt to obtain unredacted state voter rolls to feed into a powerful Homeland Security computer program that can identify potential non-citizen voters. The Justice Department filed more than 30 lawsuits They have tried to force states and the District of Columbia to release the information, but so far none have been successful.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, eight states – including heavily Democratic California, Oregon and Washington – are holding postal-only voting. For these states, complying with the executive order would effectively mean releasing the names of all or nearly all of their voters to the Postal Service.

It is unclear whether these lists would include voters’ sensitive personal information, such as driver’s licenses and some Social Security numbers, which the Justice Department has requested to obtain.

In its announcement Monday, the Justice Department appeared to indicate that Homeland Security had planned to go beyond the scope of the regulation.

The executive order does not specifically direct the Postal Service to share voter and absentee ballot data with Homeland Security. Instead, the Postal Service is directed to coordinate investigations into alleged election crimes with the Justice Department.

Data sharing arrangements between DHS and the Postal Service “are not addressed in the order,” Monday’s notice said. Any future sharing would depend on both the Postal Service’s mail-in voting rule and “any policy and legal determinations regarding the desirability and feasibility of such data sharing” — in other words, a decision the Trump administration will make later.

Participation in the computer system

The Justice Department also reported Friday that the Department of Homeland Security plans to implement “State Voter Roll Verification” based on the Systematic Alien Verification for Eligibility (SAVE) system – the computer program that can flag potential non-citizen voters.

Friday’s announcement said states could upload their voter lists to SAVE, but Homeland Security already allows states to voluntarily transfer that information through the program. Some Republican-led states have done so previously used SAVE to scan their voter rolls, and it is unclear how the recent verification process would have changed.

On Monday, the Justice Department also made a U-turn on this issue. DOJ lawyers wrote in the second notice that the executive order “does not specify this approach and the new memorandum no longer contains this discussion.”

Monday’s notice from the Justice Department clarifies that Homeland Security still plans to compile lists of citizens in each state, as required by the executive order. The agency plans to give states the opportunity to receive citizenship information from federal agencies by June 30, the release said.

The executive order also requires Homeland Security to provide individuals with access to their citizenship records and to update or correct them prior to elections. The Justice Department said Monday that Mullin had approved a phased plan for a publicly accessible portal.

Monday’s announcement, which cites Mullin’s memo, simply says that these features will be developed and rolled out later this year after the legal, privacy and technical foundations are completed. This leaves open the possibility that states may have access to federal citizenship information weeks or months before individual voters can view the same data and point out any errors.

Questions remain

What prompted Mullin to sign the memo on Monday is unclear. Homeland Security did not respond to a request for a copy of the memo.

Lawyers for the League of Women Voters reached out early Monday evening filed a court document in a separate lawsuit challenging Homeland Security’s operate of the SAVE system, which alerted the judge to Friday’s notice from the Justice Department.

“It remains unclear—whether from the Implementation Notice or otherwise—what specific legal authority either the USPS or DHS has to share, consolidate, and use data in this manner,” the attorneys wrote, referring to the original data sharing plan between Homeland Security and the Postal Service.

The Ministry of Justice replied On Tuesday, he said in a court filing that the information was “no longer accurate as of last night.”

It’s also unclear what role, if any, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick played in Mullin’s decision to change course. Trump’s executive order tasks Lutnick with coordinating implementation efforts.

The Commerce Department did not respond to States Newsroom’s questions.

Sixteen Democratic senators last week called on Lutnick to stop implementing the executive order. The letter, led by Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Alex Padilla of California, asked Lutnick to keep records of the order’s development from congressional oversight.

“Mail-in voting is secure and convenient and has been used successfully across the political spectrum over many election cycles,” the senators wrote.