Lawsuit seeks release of SSA records on DOGE’s voter data agreement

A nonprofit advocacy group is suing the Social Security Administration to release records on an agreement DOGE made to share voter data with a non-government source, and other documents regarding the improper use of Americans’ data.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Democracy Forward seeks to compel the SSA to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests linked to a “voter data agreement” revealed in a January court filing.

That filing from the Department of Justice, which is part of a lawsuit by several labor groups over DOGE’s handling and exposure of personally identifiable information, detailed coordination between two members of Elon Musk’s tech collective embedded at SSA and an advocacy group seeking “evidence of voter fraud.”  

The DOJ said in that filing that in March 2025, a political advocacy group asked those DOGE representatives for Social Security data to analyze state voter rolls. Per the filing, the group’s “stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” 

One of those DOGE members signed a “Voter Data Agreement” in his capacity as an SSA employee and sent the document back to the group on March 24, 2025.

“At this time, there is no evidence that SSA employees outside of the involved members of the DOGE Team were aware of the communications with the advocacy group,” the DOJ wrote. “Nor were they aware of the ‘Voter Data Agreement.’ This agreement was not reviewed or approved through the agency’s data exchange procedures.”

Democracy Forward, which represents the federal unions at the center of that lawsuit, immediately filed a FOIA seeking a copy of the voter data agreement, plus all emails between the parties. The SSA acknowledged receipt of the request, per the new complaint, but on March 4 informed Democracy Forward that “because of ‘unusual circumstances,’ specifically ‘the need for consultation with another agency,’ SSA needed to extend the time limit to respond to this request.”

Despite subsequent follow-ups, Democracy Forward claims that it still hasn’t received the documents and hasn’t heard from SSA in days. 

“The Trump-Vance administration continues to hide what it is doing with Americans’ personal data, who it has unlawfully shared it with, and why,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a press release. “The stewardship over the personal data of people in America is one of the most important obligations of our government — and they are failing.” 

“The revelations of misconduct by the Trump-Vance administration regarding our private information and the integrity of our election system are outrageous,” she continued. “We will not stop until we know exactly how far this unlawful assault on our privacy, and potential threats to free and fair elections, go.”

Democracy Forward also aims to compel the Social Security Administration to respond to FOIA requests tied to other revelations in the January DOJ filing, including two Hatch Act referrals submitted by the SSA to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel regarding employees who had communicated with True the Vote — which is “widely suspected to be” the “election denying” group in question, the press release states.

There are also public records requests that Democracy Forward wants resolved about DOGE’s handling of SSA data on unauthorized Cloudflare servers, a violation of agency security standards. 

The release of the DOJ court filing in January sparked quick outrage on Capitol Hill, with the chair and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee requesting a briefing by SSA to clarify the agency’s practices on PII. 

And earlier this month, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., ranking member of the chamber’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called for a full, independent investigation into DOGE’s access to and allegedly improper transferring of Social Security Administration data.