In January, the Franklin County Board of Elections in Ohio received a surprising call.
The man on the line said he was an agent at the Department of Homeland Security – and he needed immediate access to voter records. Franklin County has a large population of Democrats and has long been a focal point of Republican skepticism about urban voting centers in Ohio.
In the weeks that followed, the requests multiplied. According to emails reviewed by Reuters, the agent asked for voter registration forms and voting histories for dozens of voters – records that include driver’s license numbers and other confidential data. He pressed for information about local voter‑registration groups, describing the request as an “investigation” and “very time sensitive.” But he offered no explanation for what prompted his probe or where it was headed.
The requests were a bolt from the blue for Franklin County election officials. Under the U.S. Constitution, elections – even for national offices such as the presidency – are run by states, not the federal government. Adding to the confusion, DHS’s mission has traditionally focused largely on counterterrorism, border security and immigration enforcement.
“We’d never received a call from Homeland Security before, so that was unusual,” said Antone White, the county’s elections director. He said he complied, but still does not know the purpose of the inquiry. DHS declined to comment on the Ohio operation, but said its agents are “actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found.”
The U.S. attorney’s office for southern Ohio declined to comment on whether any federal investigation was underway.
The Ohio episode is part of a larger pattern Reuters found in at least eight states: a wider-than-known federal push into the machinery and conduct of U.S. elections, which since the founding of the republic in 1789 have been run by states and local governments. Trump administration officials and investigators have fanned out across the country, seeking confidential records, pressing for access to voting equipment and re-examining voter-fraud cases that courts and bipartisan reviews have already rejected.
