In a bid to tackle alleged voter fraud, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to award a contract worth up to $5 million to a company that will create a massive national database of voters.
ICE first detailed what the contract would entail in a document published last week. “The purpose of this acquisition is for the handling and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities,” the document reads.
In the document, ICE says that the agency will initially provide a list of specific states it wants to acquire public voter registration files from, though the successful contractor will need to have the capability to obtain data from all 50 states. ICE is also seeking voting history data “for each federal election specified by the government, including general, primary, runoff, and special federal elections.” ICE is seeking publicly available information from each state, which each have their own rules around how it is obtained. This would include voter registration, and in many cases, voting history. Either could potentially include party affiliation—a move that experts believe will violate a right to privacy for US voters.
The document states that the successful contractor won’t be asked to collect and share party affiliation data fields for voters but that could change if “explicitly directed in writing by the contracting officer.” That contracting officer is listed as Michael Royer, section chief at Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative unit within ICE. ICE, DHS, and Royer did not respond to a request for comment.
On Monday, the agency published an acquisition forecast document that revealed the ICE contract would be worth between $2 million and $5 million. The final contract is expected to be published next Monday, and is likely to be awarded soon after, given that the term of the contract will expire on September 30.
ICE’s effort to create a national voter database is part of a much broader effort within the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration to undermine trust in the upcoming midterm elections. For more than a year, the Department of Justice has been seeking to create a national voter database by demanding states hand over unredacted voters rolls. States and courts, however, have pushed back.
DHS has already demanded states comply with its investigations. The agency has also said it would withhold emergency preparedness and counter terrorism funding from states who refused to implement White House policies on elections. And the agency has gone after voters directly, threatening to deport those suspected of voting illegally even when they have no criminal convictions. Despite assertions from DHS and the Trump administration, incidents of noncitizens voting are vanishingly rare, with an investigation in Georgia this week finding very few examples.
DHS also announced a new surge to investigate alleged voter fraud in certain states ahead of the midterms, to “pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” according to internal DHS guidance that was first reported by CNN this week.
“It’s a joke,” Wisconsin governor Tony Evers said when asked about DHS’ plans. “I think it’s another thing that Trump is doing to make it look like there’s all sorts of problems that are not problems in Wisconsin. And frankly, he needs to stay out of it because voting is a state issue and not a federal issue.”