The DOJ Accelerates Its Hunt For Voter Fraud — With DOGE’s Help

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is assisting the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate instances of voter fraud — with a focus on identifying and prosecuting alleged noncitizen voters in every state.

In a recent appearance on the right-wing podcast All-In, Antonio Gracias — a billionaire investor who is also working alongside Elon Musk in DOGE — said the DOJ asked DOGE to find “10-20 cases” of alleged noncitizen voting in every state. Gracias added that DOGE — the faux-agency created by President Donald Trump to hunt down fraud and waste within federal agencies — is working with both the DOJ and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to prosecute alleged noncitizen voters.

“We’ve sampled a handful of states. And in those handful of states, we found people registered to vote. And we have found people who actually voted,” Gracias said. “And this is all being done by sampling… We are sampling DHS data and then have to go to the voter rolls, check the voter rolls, and then give that to HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, who goes and checks the voter record by subpoena and the voter and the cards you sign when you vote. We already had three arrests here in Florida, actually, and one indictment in New York.”

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed to Democracy Docket that DOGE is assisting the department in its efforts to investigate voter fraud, but the spokesperson could not confirm any arrests.

“DOGE has assisted agencies and departments in identifying potential cases of fraud which have been referred to the Department of Justice,” the spokesperson said. “DOGE is working closely with DOJ to identify potential fraud.”

The DOJ has seen drastic, unprecedented changes under Attorney General Pam Bondi, particularly in its voting section. The voting section, which is housed within the DOJ’s civil rights division, had an estimated 30 attorneys when Trump took office. It’s now down to just three attorneys, with its senior managers assigned to other divisions. The section also got a new mission statement, which shifts its focus from enforcing voting rights laws to targeting voter fraud.

The voting section’s new emphasis on targeting voter fraud is alarming to former voting section attorneys and staff who recently spoke with Democracy Docket. 

“What does that mean for the elections coming up?” said Joseph Rich, a longtime former attorney in the DOJ’s civil rights division, who served as chief of the voting section from 1999 to 2005. “What is going to happen when they start bringing voting fraud suits right in the middle of an election, or even close to an election? The policy of the department is to never take steps before an election.”

Instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare — especially incidents of noncitizens voting in federal elections. But the issue emerged as a central talking point for Republicans in the 2024 general election — with Trump leading the charge to spread disinformation about noncitizen voting. Shortly after Trump’s return to the office, the right-wing “election integrity” group True The Vote pressured DOGE to shift its efforts to auditing voter rolls across the country. 

It’s unclear what criteria DOGE is using to uncover alleged voter fraud and instances of noncitizen voting, but Gracias told Fox News in April that his team found thousands of potential noncitizens on voter rolls in several states. In his recent podcast appearance, he said that what DOGE found is just the “tip of the iceberg.”

“How big the iceberg is, I don’t know,” Gracias said. “And I don’t want to speculate, because I think it would not be the right thing to do at this moment. I think we’ll have more data over time.”