Today Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), represented by Protect Democracy and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s unprecedented and illegal effort to interfere in the 2026 midterms by using unreliable databases for reasons totally unrelated to their intended purpose to create lists of “citizens” in every state for determining who can and cannot vote. The complaint details how the administration’s actions are not only illegal but also run the risk of disenfranchising untold numbers of eligible voters ahead of the midterms, unless the court intervenes.
On March 31, 2026, the White House issued its second executive order on elections, which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Social Security Administration, and the State Department to create “State Citizenship Lists” of “confirmed” citizens in all 50 states who reside in those states and are entitled to vote in federal elections. The data DHS is seeking to centralize—such as social security numbers, addresses, and citizenship information—is currently held by different federal agencies for data security and privacy purposes.
As directed by the executive order and a subsequent memo from DHS, states will have just 60 days to cross reference their voter rolls with the new federal State Citizenship Lists—presumably to purge or withhold ballots from voters suspected of being ineligible to vote. Alarmingly, DHS has admitted that these lists will contain widespread inaccuracies that could result in eligible voters being wrongly flagged or removed from state voter rolls just weeks before Election Day. In fact, states that have already used this data have reported widespread errors and voter disenfranchisement and warned that there is “no way those lists are accurate.” Nevertheless, in order to compel states to use their error-prone citizenship lists, the Trump administration is threatening to investigate and prosecute states and election officials who “issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote.”
To make matters worse, by consolidating Americans’ sensitive personal information (likely including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and citizenship records) into a single federal system, the government is creating exactly the kind of centralized personal data repository that federal privacy law was designed to prevent—one that presents a significantly heightened risk of breach, misuse, and identity theft.