Two weeks after Department of Homeland Security officials announced they had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, state election officials continue to question the validity and origins of the data. The agency has not disclosed its methodology or provided the states with the specific names of individuals in question, creating significant uncertainty about the reliability of the figures.
State officials have raised multiple concerns about how DHS obtained the data, particularly regarding Social Security numbers, which do not appear on public voter rolls. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar questioned how the federal agency acquired sensitive personal information when the Department of Justice has been unsuccessfully suing states for refusing to provide such data. Election experts have noted that matching voter rolls without unique identifiers like Social Security numbers is notoriously error-prone and frequently produces high numbers of false positives that shrink significantly during investigation.
The timing of the allegations has heightened concerns about potential federal interference in the upcoming midterm election. State officials fear the claims could be used as justification for law enforcement to intervene in vote-counting processes. The letters from DHS arrived just before the 90-day “quiet period” begins next week on August 5, during which election officials are barred from systematically removing voter registrations. Meanwhile, a federal judge previously halted the use of the SAVE system that DHS indicated it may rely on for verification efforts.
Election security experts have characterized the announcement as potentially serving a political purpose rather than reflecting a good faith effort to address election integrity. The Center for Election Innovation & Research’s executive director stated that the numbers should be considered unverified until backed by transparent methodology. Recent studies have found that actual voting by noncitizens is extremely rare, and previous efforts to identify noncitizens on voter rolls have historically been marked by inflated preliminary figures that decline substantially upon investigation.
The administration has indicated more similar announcements and investigations may follow in coming weeks, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warning of consequences for state officials who do not cooperate. Federal procurement records show DHS is using data from commercial brokers like Thomson Reuters to support its election-related investigations, though the specific role of such data in the four-state analysis remains unclear.
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