The Atlantic: Rules Designed to Create Chaos
An executive order directed the Department of Homeland Security to create a mechanism for states to review citizenship lists of potential voters. DHS has not yet provided those lists, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed suit to stop the agency from compiling or distributing them.
Why this matters: Voter citizenship lists built by a federal agency and handed to states are not a neutral administrative tool. They combine immigration and voting data in ways that could flag legal voters as suspicious and create pressure to purge them from rolls. EPIC is trying to stop this before the lists exist, because once a government database is built and shared, it is very hard to put back. The people most likely to be wrongly caught in a system like this are naturalized citizens and people whose records contain any clerical inconsistency.
Who should care: Lawyers · Privacy officers · Compliance · General readers · Policy
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