ICE moves to spend up to $5 million on a nationwide voter data system

Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to allocate up to $5 million to a vendor capable of assembling a massive database of voter registration and election-history records from every state. The solicitation, released last week, specifies that the contractor must handle publicly available files and may later be instructed to collect party-affiliation information. Michael Royer, the contracting officer for Homeland Security Investigations, is listed as the point of contact.

The move follows a series of DHS initiatives aimed at scrutinizing voter rolls, including threats to withhold funding from non-cooperating states and recent investigations into alleged non-citizen voting. State officials, such as Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, have dismissed the effort as politically motivated. Prior contracts have seen ICE pay large sums to data firms like Thomson one outlet for access to combined personal-record platforms.