Responding to new whistleblower claims, Democrats warned against what they called the latest Trump administration move to “rig the election” by illegally accessing voter data.
In a Monday afternoon press conference, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately stop efforts to access state voting records.
“We are weeks away from the midterms,” Schumer said. “Americans should not have to fear being targeted by their own government because of how they’ve registered to vote.”
Join 350,000 readers who rely on our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest in voting, elections and democracy.
In a report produced by the Democracy Defenders Fund, the whistleblower alleged that DHS agents were directed to build cases against noncitizen voters at a rate of five cases per hour, with a daily quota of 40 people. Agents posed as voters to use state voter registration websites to secretly access the data, the report claimed.
Some states prohibit the kind of activity DHS has reportedly engaged in by restricting access to individual voter files to only voters themselves.
“In order to find an exact match, your voter registration record must have either a California driver license or identification card (DL/ID) number, or the last four digits of your social security number,” California’s state voter registration website reads, according to the...
A video showing French riot police violently beating a 26-year-old street medic in Paris has gone viral, with social media users falsely claiming he died from his injuries. But the street medic is...