The Trump administration is taking a closer look at voter rolls across nearly the entire country ahead of the midterms.
The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing voter data from at least 47 states to find noncitizens who may have been improperly registered, according to an internal Sept. 1 email obtained by Reuters.
Hundreds of federal officers have been pulled into the effort, known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.”
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And the White House wants them moving faster.
The internal email shows officials discussing taking delays all the way to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles if DHS couldn’t make “forward progress.”
The administration is also using a commercial data broker to fill in information that isn’t available on public voter rolls. Critics warn that bad or incomplete matches could result in American citizens being wrongly flagged.
The effort is part of Trump’s broader push to crack down on noncitizens registering or voting in U.S. elections.
And there is evidence that noncitizens have ended up on the rolls.
Reuters reported this week that states may have registered more than 30,000 noncitizens since 2000 because of clerical mistakes and software problems.
Trump has long argued that noncitizen voting is a serious problem. Studies and audits have generally found relatively few documented illegal votes compared with the roughly 170 million registered voters nationwide.
The administration’s response is pretty straightforward: check the rolls and find out.
White House pushes for speedy review of voter rolls in hunt for noncitizen voters https://t.co/5Pr9qr4SIn
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) September 24, 2026
