1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Thirteen states have complied with a federal request to turn over voter rolls. Texas jumped on that bandwagon early, turning over our personal information to the DOJ under the guise of ferreting out voter fraud. The data passed on to the federal government on December 23 included information about roughly 1.4 million registered Texas voters. The information shared included driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. That means Texas has supplied the federal government information that they have no business having. States are in charge of all processes related to determining voter eligibility. So why did Texas violate their citizens trust in such a manner? Voter suppression, plain and simple. Texas supplied a solution to the non-existent problem of voter fraud. And violated our trust. All because the current president lost the 2020 election. And wants revenge. The Brennan Center for Justice, an independent, nonpartisan law and policy organization, condemned the White House demands as “part of the administration’s concerted campaign to interfere with future elections.” “The requests cover sensitive, private information such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Its collection by the federal government raises serious privacy and security concerns and may violate state and federal laws.” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said in a statement to State Line: “What the DOJ is trying to do is something that should frighten everybody across the political spectrum. They’re trying to use the power of the executive branch to bully states into turning over highly sensitive data: date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license—the holy trinity of identity theft.” Seventeen former Civil Rights Division lawyers wrote in a recent brief in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against California: “While DOJ has provided a purpose for its requests—enforcing the NVRA [National Voter Registration Act]—that purpose appears to be a stalking horse for its true purpose: to create a national voter roll and enable the federal government to conduct its own list maintenance to discover whether noncitizens or undocumented immigrants are registered to vote.” Voting rights groups have filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in Austin. The plaintiffs said the database being used to identify voter irregularity, known as SAVE, is unreliable, and that Texas’ use of it to remove people from the rolls, including some who are naturalized U.S. citizens, is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act. We can only wish there is such a thing as a class-action suit formed to include every single voter in Texas whose personal info is now in the hands of the DOJ. And another one for those kicked off the Texas voter rolls in error by them and/or Texas. Constituents were betrayed by weak elected officials. Officials who showed where their loyalty actually lies. Officials who do not deserve to keep their jobs come November.