State Department weighs sharing passport records for voter citizenship checks

( NewsNation ) — The State Department is “assessing” how to share passport information with state and local governments, as well as some nonprofit groups, ahead of the midterm elections .

According to a department spokesperson, the goal is to share the information in a way that “protects Americans’ data, deters fraud and supports the integrity of U.S. citizenship.”

The statement follows a 6-3 Supreme Court decision Friday that allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide citizenship information to local governments so they can verify whether registered voters are U.S. citizens.

The Trump administration outlined the plan in a court filing Tuesday evening. In it, the Justice Department said the administration will begin using passport records to identify noncitizens on voter registration lists.

According to the filing, the State Department will soon publish a notice in the Federal Register , the federal government’s official daily publication, proposing to share “information contained in the Passport Services Records system” with other federal agencies, which were not identified.

The notice would allow the information to be shared with entities using federal verification systems “for the purpose of verifying identity or citizenship for users accessing government websites and applications, voter eligibility and other governmental services,” according to Democracy Docket.

Those records contain personal information on everyone who has applied for a U.S. passport.

A 1974 federal privacy law requires the government to provide public notice before using personal information, such as names or Social Security numbers, in a new way. The filing said the notice could be published as soon as Oct. 22.

Earlier efforts by the administration to use federal records to verify voter eligibility relied primarily on records from the Social Security Administration and DHS, and several were slowed by successful court challenges.

The filing was submitted in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee against President Trump over his executive order on mail voting. The Supreme Court recently blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing parts of that order, though other provisions remain in effect.

The lawsuit now focuses on those remaining provisions, which direct DHS to compile lists of businesses in every state using its own records, Social Security records and other federal data.