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DHS requested a contractor to collect voter registration and history files from all 50 states annually for ICE fraud detection

On August 25, 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a request for information — the first step in a federal contracting process — seeking a third-party contractor to collect voter registration files and, where available, public voter history files from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories on an annual basis. DHS said the data would support "fraud detection and data segmentation" operations run by Homeland Security Investigations, ICE's investigative arm, that the effort would start with a limited number of jurisdictions but could expand, and that no contract has yet been awarded. The RFI follows a July 2026 White House speech in which President Trump alleged foreign interference in state voter data and comes amid a broader administration campaign to compel and cross-reference state voter rolls.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Washington, D.C.

Abuses documented

Actors

On August 25, 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a request for information (RFI) — the initial step in a federal contracting process — seeking a third-party company able to collect voter registration files and, "when applicable," public voter history files covering general, primary, runoff, and special federal elections, from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories, Courthouse News Service reported. DHS said the collections would occur annually, would begin with "a limited number of jurisdictions" but could expand during the contract period, and would support "fraud detection and data segmentation" operations run by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency said it was not seeking party-affiliation data and that contractors should not conduct "political affiliation-based targeting, prioritization or ranking" of jurisdictions or individuals, and should follow "applicable jurisdictional laws and access procedures." No contract has been awarded, and it is unclear how much DHS plans to spend on the effort.

The RFI follows a July 2026 White House speech in which President Trump declared an "election security nightmare" and released documents he said proved Chinese interference in voter data from more than a dozen states — material that, per Courthouse News, largely restated a 2021 National Intelligence Council finding that China did not interfere with 2020 vote tabulation, transmission, or results. It also lands amid a separate, monthslong Department of Justice campaign compelling states to surrender voter rolls for cross-referencing against DHS's SAVE citizenship-verification database, and after DHS and HSI had already pursued individual voter-roll records from counties and states through direct requests, subpoenas, and homeland-security grant conditions. This RFI is the first documented step toward a standing, contractor-run pipeline drawing that data from every U.S. jurisdiction on a recurring basis, rather than the state-by-state or county-by-county requests seen earlier in the campaign. The Constitution's Elections Clause assigns the administration of elections and the maintenance of voter rolls primarily to the states, not to federal law-enforcement agencies.

Why we recorded this

The Constitution assigns the administration of elections and the maintenance of voter rolls to the states, and federal privacy law limits how the government may collect and use Americans' personal data. Here DHS moved to build a permanent, contractor-operated pipeline pulling voter registration and history data from every state, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories on a recurring annual basis, for use by ICE's investigative arm — the first standing, nationwide procurement of its kind in a monthslong federal campaign to collect state voter data. This archive records the step because a durable federal contract to gather every American's voter data through an immigration-enforcement agency converts routine election administration into a permanent surveillance capability that no statute authorizes.

Sources

  1. DHS bids to vacuum up voter registration, history from all 50 states — Courthouse News Service primary accessed August 26, 2026

See also