2026-04-21T20:26:48.952Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
作者：蒂尔尼·斯尼德
3小时前
发布于 2026年4月21日，美国东部时间下午4:26
斯蒂芬·马图伦/盖蒂图片社
美国有线电视新闻网获得的司法部内部通讯显示，特朗普政府近一年来一直在利用存在缺陷的数据系统，试图从选民名册中清除非公民选民，同时对法院和民主党选举官员隐瞒这些计划。
白宫一直知晓司法部的进展情况。当时，司法部正竭力争取各州配合其获取未删减版选民登记信息的大规模要求，并最终对31名选举官员提起诉讼。直到上个月，司法部负责投票事务的最高律师才在诉讼中承认，司法部计划将数据提交给国土安全部运营的公民身份验证系统进行核查。
一个选民维权组织于周二提起新诉讼，质疑唐纳德·特朗普总统大规模收集和审查选民数据的项目。诉讼中援引的内部邮件为这项行动提供了新细节。
在2025年11月的一封邮件中，现任司法部投票部门负责人埃里克·内夫建议，对部分选举官员隐瞒政府计划如何处理包含美国民众私人信息的未删减版州选民名册。
“我认为我们的回复应该始终是：‘我们将以符合联邦法律的方式使用这些数据’，仅此而已，”内夫在讨论民主党州官员的来信时写道。这些官员在信中询问政府计划将数据上传至国土安全部“未经证实且可能存在安全隐患的公民身份核查系统”的具体计划。
在提交给法院的文件以及与各州就数据要求进行的正式通信中，司法部仅给出了模糊的解释，称其正在评估各州是否遵守两项与选民登记相关的联邦法律。
内夫在11月的邮件交流中提及了这些法律，并表示：“这些法律都没有要求我们向各州透露我们将如何使用这些数据。”
相关报道 2024年11月5日，密歇根州底特律市，民众在底特律消防局17号引擎站7号梯队5站长室的投票站投票。当日美国人前往投票站，参加共和党候选人、前总统唐纳德·特朗普与民主党候选人、副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯之间的总统竞选投票，以及多个将决定国会权力平衡的州级选举。
莎拉·莱斯/盖蒂图片社/档案照片 密歇根州总检察长拒绝特朗普政府的选票请求， amid broader push to challenge elections 阅读时长：3分钟
“除了承诺遵守联邦法律之外，任何法官都无权限制我们的行动，”他说道。
非公民投票的情况极为罕见，且在联邦选举中是被禁止的。但特朗普一直执着于这一说法，毫无根据地声称即便他赢得的2016年大选也受到了数百万张非法选票的玷污。
各州原本可以自愿使用该项目——即《系统性外国人权益核查系统》（简称SAVE）——来审查其选民名单，但此类审查已被证明会产生假阳性结果，错误地将符合资格的选民认定为非公民。
两党选举官员均告诉CNN，他们担心政府将利用此次审查向各州施压，要求其进行有缺陷的名册清除行动，从而剥夺美国民众的投票权。他们还担心，各州拒绝配合这些清除行动将被用作借口，对11月的选举提出质疑。
美国宪法将管理选举的职责赋予各州，国会有权对投票进行部分监管，但并未赋予行政部门单方面制定投票规则的权力。
周二提起的诉讼指控称，特朗普政府自行审查州名册上不合格选民的计划，再加上特朗普最近发布的一项行政命令，要求美国邮政服务在决定谁能收到邮寄选票方面发挥作用，实质上是非法篡夺州政府的权力，同时还指控政府在处理信息的过程中违反了联邦隐私法。
“司法部正在利用这些高度敏感的数据，在没有法定授权的情况下，构建一个大规模的新型选民监控和清除体系，危及数百万美国人的基本投票权和隐私权，”诉讼书中写道。
相关垂直视频 盖蒂图片社 特朗普签署邮寄选票行政命令
司法部未回应CNN的置评请求。
独家提供给CNN的内部通讯进一步揭示了选民数据项目的起源，以及政府如何应对大多数州对大规模数据要求的抵制。
“我希望推进各项工作，”去年负责投票事务的特朗普任命律师迈克尔·盖茨在去年夏天的一封邮件中说道，当时他正在与其他部门律师沟通选民数据要求和其他与选举相关的案件。“下周将与白宫召开另一次进度会议。因此，我们需要展示自上次会议以来取得的进展。”
“他们玩忽职守”
目前已有多个联邦机构参与追查州登记档案中的外国人和其他不合格选民。这项工作的重点大多是推动各州使用SAVE系统核查其名册中的非公民身份。至少从去年5月开始，司法部就希望自行将州选民名册与该数据系统进行比对。
“我们收到选民名单后，将与各州合作，帮助他们遵守相关规定，”已离开司法部的盖茨在8月的一封邮件中对民权部门负责人哈米特·迪隆说道。这封邮件提及了两部为各州维护选民名册设定监管框架的联邦法律。“司法部此前从未严格执行《全国选民登记法》/《帮助美国投票法》，他们玩忽职守。我们将帮助他们。”
但从各州获取保密的选民记录被证明是一项复杂的任务，即便只是与国土安全部达成最终协议，以便司法部能够使用其移民数据系统，也花费了近一年的时间。
国土安全部去年7月表示，司法部需要支付15万美元以无限制使用该工具。“请暂时搁置此事。我们不会支付15万美元。我们需要让司法部管理和预算办公室或相关办公室以及白宫介入，”一名司法部官员在邮件中说道，此处指代司法部的两个高级办公室和白宫。国土安全部向CNN证实，司法部最终达成了协议，但协议内容并未公开。
与此同时，司法部负责住房歧视案件的律师被调来协助起草致各州的信函，要求其提供未删减版的选民名册。因为在特朗普第二任期伊始，几乎所有专攻投票事务的职业律师都已离职或被解雇。
肯·塞德诺/路透社/档案照片
绝大多数州最初都拒绝提供非公开的、高度个人化的选民登记信息。他们指出，披露这些数据可能违反联邦隐私法和各自州的隐私法。
司法部的一名住房律师在9月的一封邮件中评论道，回应犹他州提出的隐私担忧“变得比我预期的要复杂一些”。当时犹他州的州选举管理负责人为共和党人。她在邮件中请求同事对她起草的回复提供意见。
这封邮件以及其他约1200页的内部通讯是通过《信息自由法》诉讼获得的，由左翼政府监督组织“公民责任与道德准则华盛顿分会”提供。该组织也在新诉讼中代表个别选民和选民维权组织“共同事业”。根据《信息自由法》的各项特权豁免条款，文件中的大量内容已被删减。
由于各州对数据要求表示担忧，特朗普政府的高级官员讨论了提供数据共享协议，以书面形式承诺遵守联邦政策法律。
盖茨在8月与全国州务卿协会的电话会议中表示，司法部将提供一份统一的谅解备忘录，但“不会就50份不同的谅解备忘录进行谈判，这可能会耗费数月时间”。根据他与民权部门一名高级官员分享的会议记录，他当时这样说道。
该协议中要求各州仅用45天时间调查并清除政府认定为不合格的选民，司法部拒绝放宽这一要求，这甚至让共和党选举官员感到头疼。仅有两个州同意了这些条款，另有十多个州在未达成正式协议的情况下共享了数据。
相关报道 图文插画：阿尔贝托·米尔/CNN/@参议员伯杰通过X平台发布/加利福尼亚州和密苏里州州议会 图文插画：阿尔贝托·米尔/CNN 追踪各州前所未有的重新划分选区工作 阅读时长：2分钟
关于司法部希望“联邦化”选民名册维护工作的指控
对拒绝提供数据的州提起诉讼，对政府而言并非一帆风顺。
尽管内夫去年11月信心满满地表示，司法部无需提供其使用选民名册计划的更多信息，但已有四家法院裁定，其数据要求缺乏司法部用以获取记录的法律所要求的“依据”和“目的”，第五家法院则以其他理由驳回了司法部的诉讼请求。
“本法院和美国民众有权知晓数百万美国人的敏感信息将被用于何种具体用途，”地区法官戴维·O·卡特在1月份驳回政府针对加州的数据要求诉讼时写道。“法院不必接受脱离政府在法庭外实际表述的、表面化的、形式化的解释。”
该裁决和另一起案件目前已提交上诉法院，迪隆表示如有必要，他将把此案提交至最高法院。
数月来，政府在法庭上避免讨论其针对国土安全部数据系统审查记录的计划。直到上个月下旬，在罗德岛州选民数据相关的听证会上，内夫才阐明了这些意图。几天后，特朗普发布行政命令，指示国土安全部使用SAVE和其他联邦数据库构建一份“公民身份名单”并与各州共享。数月来，政府一直在法庭上否认正在组建全国选民登记册。
周二提起的诉讼辩称，“司法部没有任何法定权力建立全国选民登记系统，也无权联邦化或以其他方式接管各州维护选民名册的职责。”
Internal documents shed light on Trump’s crusade to vet state voter rolls
2026-04-21T20:26:48.952Z / CNN
By Tierney Sneed
3 hr ago
PUBLISHED Apr 21, 2026, 4:26 PM ET
Voters fill out their ballots at a polling place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 4, 2025.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
The Trump administration has been working for nearly a year on an effort to weed out noncitizens from voter rolls using a faulty data system while keeping those plans hidden from courts and Democratic election officials, internal Justice Department communications obtained by CNN show.
The White House was kept in the loop on the Justice Department’s progress, as it struggled to get cooperation from states in its sprawling requests for unredacted voter registration information, ultimately bringing lawsuits against 31 election chiefs. Only last month did the DOJ’s top voting lawyer acknowledge in the litigation that the department wanted to run the data through a citizenship verification system operated by the Department of Homeland Security.
Internal emails cited in a new lawsuit filed Tuesday by a voter advocacy group challenging President Donald Trump’s sprawling voter data-collection and review project shed new light on the effort.
In one November 2025 email, Eric Neff, the current leader of the DOJ voting section, advised that the department keep some election officials in the dark about what the administration was intending to do with unredacted state voter rolls, which contain private information about Americans.
“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, discussing a letter from Democratic state officials that asked administration about plans to upload the data to DHS’ “unproven and potentially insecure citizenship-check system.”
In court filings and in formal correspondence with states about the data demands, the department had provided only vague explanations that it was assessing states’ compliance with two federal laws concerning voter registration.
Neff, in the November email exchange, referenced those laws and said that “none of them require to give the states information about what we are going to do with the data.”
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“No judge will have authority to limit us beyond a promise of Federal law compliance,” he said.
Noncitizen voting is very rare and is prohibited in federal elections. But Trump is fixated on the idea, claiming without evidence that even the 2016 election that he won had been tainted by the millions of illegal ballots
State can already voluntarily use the program — known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement or (SAVE) — to review their voter lists, but those reviews have shown it can produce false positives that wrongly identify eligible voters as noncitizens.
Election officials of both parties have told CNN they’re worried the administration will use the audits to pressure states to conduct flawed purges that disenfranchise Americans, and that a state’s refusal to go along with those removals will be used as a pretext to cast doubt about November’s elections.
The Constitution tasks the states with the job of running elections, giving Congress some room to regulate voting, but assigning no unilateral authority on voting rules to the executive branch.
Trump nonetheless has said he wants to “nationalize” elections. His administration’s plans to do its own review for ineligible voters on state rolls — especially when coupled with a recent Trump executive order directing the US Postal Service to play role in deciding who gets mail ballots — amounts to an unlawful usurpation of state authority, the lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges, while accusing the administration of violating federal privacy law in how its handled the information.
“DOJ is using this highly sensitive data to build — without statutory authorization — a sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus that endangers millions of Americans’ fundamental voting and privacy rights,” the lawsuit says.
Related vertical video Getty Images Trump signs mail-in ballots executive order
The Justice Department did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Internal communications shared exclusively with CNN shed new light on how the voter data project came to be, and how the administration has grappled with the resistance most states showed to the sweeping data demands.
“I want to keep things moving,” Michael Gates, a Trump-appointed attorney who oversaw voting matters last year, said in an email last summer checking in with other department lawyers on the voter data requests and other election-related cases, “There is another call with the White House next week on progress. So, we need to show what progress has been made since the last call.”
‘They fell asleep at the switch’
Multiple federal agencies are now involved in the hunt for foreigners and other ineligible voters on state registration files. Much of the effort has been focused on pushing states to use SAVE to vet their rolls for noncitizens, and since at least last May, the Justice Department has wanted to check the state voter rolls itself against that data system.
“When we receive the voter lists, we are going to work with states to help them into compliance,” Gates — who has since left DOJ — told the Civil Rights Division’s head, Harmeet Dhillon, in an August email that referenced two federal laws that set guardrails around how states maintain their voter lists. “They fell asleep at the switch with DOJ not historically enforcing NVRA/HAVA. We will help them.”
But obtaining the confidential voter records from states proved to be a complicated endeavor, and even getting an agreement finalized with DHS so that DOJ can use its immigrant data system has taken the better part of a year.
The DHS said last July the Justice Department would need to fork over $150,000 for unlimited use of the tool. “Let’s press pause on this please. We are not paying 150k. We need to get ODAG or Associates office involved and maybe WH,” a DOJ official said in an email, referring to two top offices at the Department and the White House. An agreement between DHS and DOJ was eventually finalized, DHS confirmed to CNN, but the agreement itself has not been made public.
Meanwhile, attorneys from the DOJ section that handles housing discrimination were brought in to help draft letters sent to states that asked for their unredacted voter rolls, as nearly all the career attorneys specializing in voting left or were pushed out at the beginning of Trump’s second term.
A banner depicting President Donald Trump is put up on the Department of Justice building in Washington, DC, on February 20.
Ken Cedeno/Reuters/File
The vast majority of the states initially balked at the request for non-public, highly personal voter registration information. They cited concerns that disclosing the data could violate the federal Privacy Act and their own state privacy laws.
One of the DOJ housing attorneys remarked in a September email that the task of responding to privacy concerns raised by Utah, where a Republican oversees state election administration, “has become a bit more complicated than I expected,” as she asked a colleague for input on a response she had been drafting.
That and roughly 1,200 pages of other internal communications were obtained in Freedom of Information Act ligation by the left-leaning government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is also representing individual voters and the voter advocacy group Common Cause in the new lawsuit. Significant portions of the documents are redacted under FOIA exemptions for various privileges.
With states expressing their uneasiness with the data requests, top Trump appointees discussed offering data-sharing agreement that would put in writing its pledge to follow federal policy law.
Gates told the National Association of Secretaries of State in an August call that it would present a uniform memorandum of understanding but “the DOJ would not be negotiating 50 different MOUs that may consume months of time,” according to notes from the call he shared with a top appointee in the Civil Rights Division.
The department’s refusal to back down from a requirement in the agreement that would give states just 45 days to investigate and remove voters the administration had deemed ineligible gave even Republican election officials heartburn. Only two states agreed to those terms, while more than a dozen others have shared the data without that formal agreement.
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Claims that DOJ wants to ‘federalize’ voter list maintenance
Taking the recalcitrant states to court for not providing the data has not been a smooth endeavor for the administration.
Despite Neff’s confidence last November that the department would not have to provide additional information about its plans for the voter rolls, four courts have ruled that its data demands lack an adequate “basis” and “purpose” required by the law the department is using to seek the records, and a fifth court rejected the DOJ’s case for separate reasons.
“This Court and the American people deserve to know what exactly the sensitive information of millions of Americans is going to be used for,” District Judge David O. Carter wrote in January when throwing out the administration’s lawsuit against California for the data. “The Court is not required to accept pretextual, formalistic explanations untethered to the reality of what the government has said outside of the courtroom.”
That ruling and another case are now before appeals courts, and Dhillon has said she will take the issue to the Supreme Court if need be.
After months that the administration avoided discussing in court its plans to review the records against the DHS data system, Neff laid out those intentions in a hearing late last month concerning Rhode Island’s voter data. Days later, Trump issued an executive order that instructs DHS to use SAVE and other federal databases to construct a “citizenship list” to be shared with states. For months, the administration had denied in court it was assembling a national voter registry.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday argues “DOJ lacks any statutory authority to establish a national voter registration system and federalize or otherwise take over the States’ responsibilities for voter list maintenance.”
