DOJ seeking Illinois voter data to purge suspected noncitizens,
documents suggest
[May 05, 2026]
By Peter Hancock
SPRINGFIELD — The Trump administration’s lawsuits seeking access to
sensitive voter registration data in Illinois and dozens of other states
is one part of a broader effort to purge state voter rolls of suspected
noncitizens, according to documents filed recently in federal court in
Springfield.
Those documents were filed Thursday, April 30, by attorneys representing
the Illinois AFL-CIO and other groups that have intervened in the case
seeking to prevent the Department of Justice from obtaining the
information. They say it proves the agency’s stated reasons for seeking
the data — to determine whether Illinois is complying with voter list
maintenance requirements — is only a pretext and the agency’s suit
against the state should be dismissed.
Several former DOJ attorneys who have worked in the Voting Section of
the Civil Rights Division filed an amicus brief in the case in March,
arguing the agency has no statutory authority to seek the information to
conduct its own list maintenance program or to identify noncitizens.
The new documents filed Thursday include internal DOJ emails that the
attorneys say were made available “in response to a public records
request lawsuit.”
One of those was a June 16, 2025, email from Michael Gates, who was then
a deputy assistant attorney general in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, to
his superior, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees
that division. In that email, Gates states that the division is seeking
access to the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien
Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database.
“This will be helpful to us because it will allow us to compare this
SAVE database against states’ voter rolls, which we will get directly
from states under the (National Voter Registration Act),” Gates wrote.
The next month, on July 28, DOJ sent its first letter to the Illinois
State Board of Elections seeking access to Illinois’ complete,
unredacted statewide voter registration list, indicating that it was
part of DOJ’s efforts to enforce voter list maintenance provisions of
NVRA. The letter was signed by Gates. It also bore the name of Maureen
Riordan, acting chief of the Voting Section within the Civil Rights
Division.
Gates has since left the Justice Department. He is currently a
Republican candidate for California attorney general in that state’s
upcoming June 2 primary.
SAVE database
The SAVE database was originally set up to help states verify the
citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public
benefits such as Medicaid and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program. Some states also use it to verify people’s
eligibility to vote.
But the program has also been the target of criticism because of its
tendency to misidentify people as noncitizens due to its use of
incomplete or inaccurate data.
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A sign marks a polling place in Springfield. (Capitol News Illinois
file photo)
On April 21, the watchdog groups Common Cause and Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit
against DOJ in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleging the agency
wants to use state voter registration lists and the SAVE database to
conduct what they call “a sprawling new voter surveillance and purging
apparatus that endangers millions of Americans’ fundamental voting and
privacy rights.”
A second document filed last week in the Illinois case is a Nov. 18,
2025, email from the acting chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Voting
Section, Eric Neff, that appears to suggest how the agency should
conceal its intentions when asked why it is seeking states’ voter
registration databases.
“I believe our reply should always be: ‘We will use the data in a manner
consistent with Federal law’ and say nothing more,” Neff wrote to fellow
DOJ lawyers Jesus Osete and Matt Zandi. He also said of the Help America
Vote Act, the Civil Rights Act and NVRA, “none of them require (us) to
give the states information about what we are going to do with the data.
No judge will have authority to limit us beyond a promise of Federal law
compliance.”
Illinois lawsuit
Illinois has refused to hand over an unredacted voter registration list.
Instead, it has provided DOJ with electronic copies of partially
redacted files that do not include sensitive information such as dates
of birth, driver’s license numbers or partial Social Security numbers.
In December, DOJ filed suit in the Central District of Illinois seeking
access to the unredacted files. It also filed similar suits in 29 other
states and Washington, D.C.
The Illinois AFL-CIO, Common Cause several and other groups have
intervened as codefendants in the case.
Attorneys for the state and the intervening parties have filed motions
to dismiss the DOJ lawsuit. Judge Colleen Lawless has not yet ruled on
the motion. Similar suits have already been dismissed in six other
states. No court has yet ruled in favor of DOJ’s request for access to
the unredacted voter files.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation.
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