The Department of Justice misled a judge about how it used voter roll data

Last week in In Rhode Island, at a hearing on the Trump administration’s efforts to access the state’s unredacted voter rolls, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy asked a Justice Department lawyer what the agency was doing with voter roll data it had already collected from other states in recent months.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” said Eric Neff, the acting head of the Voting Section, a key part of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division that focuses on enforcing federal laws that protect the right to vote. Neff added that the data collected by the Justice Department from states — which can include Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, dates of birth and addresses — was kept separate.

“The United States is taking extra care to make sure we comply with privacy law in every way imaginable,” Neff added. The Privacy Act of 1974 regulates how government agencies collect and use personally identifiable information about U.S. residents.

But Neff wasn’t telling the truth: He later admitted that the Justice Department was already collecting and analyzing data to identify voting irregularities.

In a court document filed on March 27, Neff retracted his claims. “The US made it clear that each data set was stored separately,” Neff wrote. “The United States also stated that no data analysis has yet been conducted. To correct and clarify the record, preliminary internal data analysis of non-public voter registration data has begun. In particular, the Civil Rights Division has begun the process of identifying and measuring the number and type of duplicate and deceased registered voters in each state.”

The revelation confirms what has been widely speculated: that the Justice Department appears to be collecting data and using it to identify potential problems with suspected voting irregularities ahead of the midterm elections, a key part of Trump’s broad attack on the election.

Neff and the Justice Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Critics have grown concerned about the Justice Department’s voting division, which has undergone a stark transformation since President Donald Trump regained office. A newly appointed coterie of inexperienced but deeply loyal lawyers in the Justice Department’s voting division, many of whom have endorsed conspiracy theories to deny the election, have spent their time forcing states to hand over their voter roll information.

The initiative began in May of last year, when the Justice Department sent letters to election officials in at least 48 states and Washington, D.C., requesting unredacted voter rolls. Some Republican-led states turned over the information immediately, but dozens of others refused. As a result, Neff and his colleagues filed lawsuits against 30 states, asking courts to force them to hand over the information. So far, the courts have sided with the states, with judges already dismissing cases in California, Michigan, and Oregon.

In several lawsuits, state election officials cited the enormous security risks involved in sharing such sensitive data, especially when it was not clear how the data would be stored or with whom it would be shared. “We still have no idea what the government is doing with this data,” says David Pecker, president of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former Justice Department lawyer. “There’s no idea where it’s stored, how it’s protected, or who has access to it. This data is incredibly sensitive. If someone had any of these three data points on any one of us, or a Social Security number, or a driver’s license number, or a date of birth, they could ruin us financially. That’s why states protect this data, and do a good job of it.”