ICE to Award $5 Million Contract for National Voter Database
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to contract for a system to collect and manage voter registration and voting history data from all 50 states to support fraud detection efforts.
What happened
ICE published acquisition documents indicating plans to award a contract worth $2-5 million to create a national database of publicly available voter registration and voting history files. The contractor will initially focus on states specified by ICE but must have capability to obtain data from all 50 states, including federal election records (general, primary, runoff, and special elections). The contract document states that party affiliation data will not be collected unless explicitly directed in writing by the contracting officer, Michael Royer of Homeland Security Investigations. The final contract is expected to be published and awarded before the September 30 contract term expiration. This effort is part of a broader Trump administration initiative within DHS to investigate alleged voter fraud ahead of midterm elections, including a separate $125 million contract with Thomson Reuters for access to the CLEAR database and a new DHS surge to investigate alleged voter fraud in certain states.
Context
The voter database project occurs within a wider DHS effort to centralize voter data access and investigate noncitizen voting. The Department of Justice has separately sought to compel states to provide unredacted voter rolls, though states and courts have resisted. DHS has threatened to withhold emergency preparedness and counter-terrorism funding from states refusing to implement White House election policies. The administration's stated rationale is fraud detection, though reported DHS guidance describes the effort as pursuing investigative leads and prosecutorial review. However, reported incidents of noncitizens voting are described as vanishingly rare, with a Georgia investigation finding very few examples. A senior DHS official quoted in prior reporting characterized similar data consolidation efforts as not primarily about fraud detection but about amassing large volumes of cross-referenced data from immigration, Social Security, IRS, and voting sources.
What's disputed
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers characterized DHS fraud investigation plans as baseless, stating there are no widespread voting problems in Wisconsin and that voting is a state rather than federal issue. The Trump administration and DHS assert the database is needed for fraud detection, but critics question the premise of widespread noncitizen voting.