Five Ways the Trump Administration is Targeting State Voter Rolls
For the past decade, a cast of anti-democracy activists, influencers, and groups seeking to undermine trust in elections have promoted the conspiracy theory that state voter rolls are rife with errors and fraud. This claim is false: State election officials regularly maintain and update voter rolls in accordance with the state and federal law. Unfortunately, this false claim has lingered since 2016, when President Trump first said he lost the popular vote because of widespread voter fraud.
In the years since, false claims about voter rolls have moved from the fringes to become mainstream political discourse. Now, during the second Trump administration, the federal government is not only spreading lies, but pursuing these false claims, harassing state officials, and launching baseless investigations.
Today, the attack on voter rolls takes five main forms:
1. The Justice Department has demanded that at least 48 states hand over their voter rolls—including sensitive information such as partial Social Security numbers. It has not explained how the information would be used or protected, despite repeated inquiries from states. The department has escalated the situation by suing at least 29 states, the District of Columbia, and two counties in an effort to force them to provide this data.
2. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has significantly expanded a searchable national citizenship database known as SAVE, but without transparency. It was originally designed to check for benefits eligibility, but now the program is being touted by the administration as a way to help root out supposed noncitizens on state voter rolls. State election officials have expressed concerns that the program may be inaccurate and unreliable, and puts the security of private data at risk. The administration has dodged questions about how the federal government will use the data it acquires from states, and is demanding that states allow DHS to use the information for a broad array of purposes, including criminal prosecutions and immigration enforcement.
3. The Trump administration is pursuing criminal investigations into voter roll accuracy in past elections, rooted in the president’s recycled, disproven claims. These include the idea that former President Obama led a “treasonous conspiracy” that allowed millions of illegitimate ballots to be cast and undermine Trump’s 2016 win, and false allegations that China used fake mail ballots to swing the 2020 election against Trump. State and local allies are following suit, starting their own investigations. Trump has also announced that he intends to prosecute individuals involved in administering the 2020 election.
4. Trump is taking executive action targeting election administration, attempting to seize power from Congress and the states. His first order aims to undermine trust in voter rolls by imposing new, heightened documentary proof of citizenship requirements on voters to confirm or complete their registration. Trump says he plans to issue another executive order to end mail voting and require voter ID. His political allies want additional orders on machine certification, audits, and control over who goes on voter rolls and how those lists are then maintained.
5. Mass challenges to voter rolls from third parties persist, burdening election offices. Motivated by baseless election conspiracy theories, anti-democracy groups are instructing individuals to challenge registered voters’ eligibility. Third party, fringe organizations are developing and promoting error-prone technology in this effort, resulting in the harassment and removal of eligible voters. Efforts to make these challenges are likely to increase in the coming months.
Taken together, these tactics all reveal the same goals: Attacks on voter rolls are an attempt to limit who gets to vote, to create doubt about election security, to make it harder for election officials to do their jobs, and to form a pretext to claim there was fraud and interfere with election results they don’t like.
As voting begins in the 2026 midterm elections, there will be more outlandish claims about voter rolls, including from federal officials. Those attacking voter rolls will claim they are presenting new findings. They will say the federal government is acting in a normal capacity to investigate those findings and clean up the rolls. They will say this is all part of keeping elections secure.
The opposite is true. The attack on voter rolls is not new. And it’s not normal.
Though the threats are severe, states are pushing back on these efforts. State and local election officials continue to protect elections and voter data by refusing these unlawful requests and suing the Trump administration to block its demands and the illegal federal overreach coming from executive action and investigations rooted in conspiracies.