{"id":7744,"date":"2026-04-04T00:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/7744\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T00:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:06:10","slug":"wyden-warns-social-security-chief-trumps-voter-database-is-blatant-voter-suppression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/7744\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyden warns Social Security chief: Trump\u2019s voter database is \u2018blatant voter suppression\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warned Social Security Administration chief Frank Bisignano that any follow-through on President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order creating a new database of U.S. voters using agency data would be viewed by Democrats as a conscious choice on the part of SSA officials to participate in \u201cblatant voter suppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFacilitating Donald Trump\u2019s directive to create a flawed voter database would be willing participation in blatant voter suppression ahead of consequential midterm elections,\u201d Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in a letter<\/a> to Bisignano sent Friday.<\/p>\n

The executive order<\/a>, issued March 31, directs the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status.<\/p>\n

To build the lists, the agencies would rely on<\/a> the controversial Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database that DHS has been building<\/a> under the Trump administration, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records.<\/p>\n

Those lists would then be transmitted to states, most of which have already rejected previous Trump administration efforts to collect voter data or dictate voter registration lists. Another section of the order would direct the postmaster general to develop a similar state-by-state list of voters eligible to vote by mail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe clear intent of this executive order is to undermine vote-by-mail and disenfranchise eligible voters,\u201d Wyden wrote. \u201cSSA has a duty to ensure its data is not misused as part of this effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wyden echoed numerous state officials and election experts in calling the Trump administration\u2019s executive order an unconstitutional encroachment by the executive branch on election authorities that the U.S. Constitution clearly delineates to Congress and the states.<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s executive order has already been challenged in lawsuits from states officials and voting rights advocates, and a previous, less ambitious executive order issued last year<\/a> that attempted to assert similar executive branch authorities was largely overturned by U.S. courts.<\/p>\n

Wyden\u2019s missive essentially asks Bisignano to consider whether following the Trump administration\u2019s order would conflict with his responsibility to safeguard Social Security records under laws like the Privacy Act and the Social Security Act. <\/p>\n

He asks how the agency will ensure it\u2019s not disenfranchising voters, and whether it sought permission from citizens to use their Social Security data for a federal elections list, noting that the agency\u2019s own regulations limit the sharing of Social Security data to \u201croutine use for determining eligibility or amount of benefit in a health or income maintenance program.\u201d <\/p>\n

Expanding the agency\u2019s role to elections \u2014 an area it has no background or experience in \u2014 would be in direct conflict with those rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply put, sharing Americans\u2019 personal data to DHS for creating a \u2018state citizenship\u2019 list does not meet this standard,\u201d Wyden wrote.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Derek<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by Derek B. Johnson
\n\t\t\tDerek B. Johnson is a reporter at CyberScoop, where his beat includes cybersecurity, elections and the federal government. Prior to that, he has provided award-winning coverage of cybersecurity news across the public and private sectors for various publications since 2017. Derek has a bachelor\u2019s degree in print journalism from Hofstra University in New York and a master\u2019s degree in public policy from George Mason University in Virginia.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warned Social Security Administration chief Frank Bisignano that any follow-through on President Donald Trump\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[504,477,2361,7498,877,520,7499,7500],"class_list":{"0":"post-7744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chuck-schumer","8":"tag-chuck-schumer","9":"tag-congress","10":"tag-privacy","11":"tag-save-database","12":"tag-social-security-administration","13":"tag-trump-administration","14":"tag-voter-data","15":"tag-wyden"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116343523406029739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}