From NPR · · 1m 30s
Whistleblower: voter hunt may have broken state laws
A DHS insider says agents posed as voters to pull records, with quotas of five people an hour.
In brief
A DHS insider says agents posed as voters to pull records, with quotas of five people an hour. The federal search for noncitizen voters may itself be breaking state law, and the data behind it is admittedly messy. Originally reported by NPR.
A whistleblower goes public
An anonymous federal employee, through the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund, sent an account to Sen. Alex Padilla. He and Chuck Schumer released it Monday.
The Unlawful Voter Initiative
Last month DHS surged staff into a program by that name. Agents began feeding people's personal information into public state websites to pull up individual voting histories.
Signing as someone else
Some state lookup forms, Virginia's included, require you to attest you are the voter or have their permission. The report says agents may have been made to check that box falsely.
“Such false representations would likely violate relevant state law.”
Thousands of possible violations
The whistleblower believes headquarters leadership knew and directed it, and that the initiative has potentially already broken state law thousands of times.
Twelve minutes per person
Officers were given a quota of at least five subjects an hour and 40 a day. Training materials admit the underlying voter data set contains inconsistent information.
DHS pushes back
A spokesperson called it an easy step to secure elections, done diligently, and said there is no quota on criminality. Padilla and Schumer asked Secretary Mullin to halt it before November.
“There is no quota on criminality.”
In short
The federal search for noncitizen voters may itself be breaking state law, and the data behind it is admittedly messy.
