ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud

https://www.404media.co/ice-to-pay-thomson-reuters-125-million-to-find-voter-fraud/

by Jimmc414 • 1 day ago

234 146 1 day ago

404media.co

add-sub-mul-div• 1 day ago

I found it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...

ivell• 1 day ago

Because there are no consequences of Trump's actions, he would continue to commit offenses.

Neither Biden's administration, nor the judge presiding over Trump's crimes did what should have been done.

The checks and balances failed both when Trump was in power and when he was not in power.

cosmicgadget5• 1 day ago

You conclusion is true but how you get there is deeply flawed.

With the recent immunity ruling and the impossibility of the Senate upholding impeachment, yes, the president can basically try anything he wants.

pjerem• 1 day ago

But that's not nazi because Trump have no mustache.

baggachipz• 1 day ago

Batshit insane. Does this mean they need to "find" it, like how he wanted to "find" more votes in Georgia?

VeninVidiaVicii• 1 day ago

“Find” in the sense of “find me the man and I’ll find you the crime”.

solfox• 1 day ago

I reckon that if you replace "find" with "make", you might be closer to the truth about what this data will be used for.

Forgeties793• 1 day ago

The boring truth is they’ll find nothing and the admin will pretend it never even looked. They’ve done this already with all the “very real and provable voter fraud” they investigated in previous elections. All the initiatives quietly disbanded after saying they found nothing.

They can’t even say they’ve found evidence when pressed https://newrepublic.com/post/213185/trump-election-fraud-guy...

wrs2• 1 day ago

Are you not counting the SAVE Act as an “initiative”? Even if it doesn’t pass, it’s certainly keeping the idea of election uncertainty front and center going into the midterms. Which gives cover to the local officials who have been inserted all over the country to mess things up.

sixothree• 1 day ago

So the fraud perpetrated here will be this administration denying people their right to vote?

hightrix2• 1 day ago

My guess is the fraud they are looking for vs the fraud they find will not at all be related. If they find the fraud at all, it will be entirely the current administration at fault.

pjc50• 1 day ago

Either outcome is risky for TR here. They're a very respected news publisher, so if they start colluding in fraud that would damage all their other business. If they take it seriously and don't produce results they'll get reprisals. I suspect they'll dig up every random voter registration paperwork error they can find and hand that over, while trying not to have their name tied to bigger conspiracy theories.

jm4• 1 day ago

They're not a news publisher. Not exactly anyway. They are a huge conglomerate and Reuters is just one division - and a recent addition at that. TR is probably more known for legaltech, Westlaw and ancillary kind of stuff that ends up spilling over into other industries like tax and accounting. They also have a large government division, which presumably will take on this project. Their bread and butter is enterprise tech, consolidated public data and research tools. That's sort of where the news fits in. It's just another data source.

harimau777• 1 day ago

At this point I think they are already screwed. Just collaborating with MAGA has destroyed their credibility.

sanex• 1 day ago

Pretty sure you're supposed to get a warrant to access private information. I don't know how we ended up in this place where somehow paying for info precludes the necessity to get a warrant a la flock, cell tower data, etc.

doctoboggan• 1 day ago

The legal argument is that we gave this data "voluntarily" to the data broker so the government no longer needs a warrant.

This is an area that desperately needs new laws to catch up to the reality of what is going on, but I don't really see much motion toward that goal in the near future.

wat100007• 1 day ago

The government never needs a warrant merely to ask for info, and a private entity doesn't need a warrant to voluntarily hand over info that they have. If we had decent privacy protections then a private entity couldn't decide to just hand over whatever data they have on others, but, well, we don't.

IG_Semmelweiss• 1 day ago

agreed. The sale of data is effective a run around existing law that forbids govt to collect it.

This is a huge issue. Privacy is dead as long as the government can buy its way around it.

Sheriffs depts and FLOCK, Ring Cameras, FBI , etc.

legitster2• 1 day ago

To put it more specifically the third-party doctrine needs reforms.

There are lots of things that are public information. Anyone can request public records like land titles, marriage certificates, bankruptcy filings, etc. Even ostensibly social media posts I'm kind of okay with being treated as public information.

The question is - why is Thomson Reuters allowed to get my utility records? If you call up my utility, this is not information they will give you. But Thomson Reuters is allowed to have it.

The utility can point to the language of the contract and say it's in their terms and conditions, but for the most part, I as a consumer don't have a choice between utility companies. And the law appreciates that access to water and electricity is a right - but yet these utilities enjoy a monopoly, so the idea that accepting their terms and conditions was a consumer choice wouldn't stand up to any strong legal scrutiny.

I don't really see much motion toward that goal in the near future.

There is progress! Carpenter v. United States was a clear win that is still slowly matriculating through the legal system.

More importantly, the Not For Sale act passed the House not too long ago with broad bipartisan support. It's stalled in the Senate (of course) - but it's clearly something that has legislative attention.

tadfisher• 1 day ago

Third-party doctrine.

jorblumesea• 1 day ago

sure as if laws apply anymore. who enforces any of this when the DOJ is run by the president's personal lawyer?

goolz• 1 day ago

I do. Citizens United. It is a pay-to-play system we have going on here and it is working exactly as designed. Bribery? Why no, that is simply a donation. With enough money and moral bankruptcy you can accomplish all sorts of silly things that are in direct violation of the constitution, the law, and even common decency.

cpburns2009• 1 day ago

My understanding is it started at least from the aftermath of 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Though I wouldn't be surprised if it predates that.

iso16313• 1 day ago

Oh don't be silly

Private companies take whatever information they want and sell it to any bidder they want and you get no say

It's freedom. It's not like its the government that is doing the collection, so that's ok.

njovin• 1 day ago

If you're a California resident, under the CCPA you can submit a request for Thomson Reuters to both provide you with and then delete any information they have collected about you.

The state's even setup a nice portal to automate these requests across 600+ data brokers.

https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/

goodluckchuck• 1 day ago

Since they are working for the Federal government here, doesn’t the supremacy clause trump state law and allow them to deny / retain that data?

Grombobulous• 1 day ago

Is there a federal law with supremacy over the state law? My layperson’s understanding is that there would need to be something in existing federal law that forces retention. Not just some executive order, government contract, or executive policy.

A company could defy state law but they wouldn’t be protected from state level civil and criminal charges. There’s not much of a mechanism for the federal government to do anything about that.

ktm5j3• 1 day ago

This may be an unpopular opinion, but is this really the best way to respond here? Won't this just give them the opportunity to claim that California is doing this specifically to hide fraud? $125 mil is a drop in the bucket compared to ICE's budget, if they want to spend it like this why not just let them? Thomson Reuters has an excellent track record of being impartial/non-partisan.. maybe we could finally get past the nonsense election rigging claims. Just my 2c

saghm2• 1 day ago

The type of people who have been worked up about supposed voter fraud have rejected all existing evidence, so I don't know why you'd expect this go do any differently. Let's not forget that ICE has already admitted to lying directly to courts about the justification for their actions[1]; there's absolutely no reason to enable them in digging for more info. At absolute best, they're in a wild goose chase based on our speculation, but more plausibly they'll either lie about the results or try to use it for entirely unrelated purposes.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/26/ice-lawyers-...

cosmicgadget5• 1 day ago

California passes a law to protect consumers from data brokers amidst the destruction of the CFPB.

Californians individually make use of these protections.

Magas: "That just confirms voter fraud!"

At this point it is simply best to ignore what they are saying or would say.

sizzle• 1 day ago

What’s the outcome if you submit a DROP request, less targeted spam phone calls/junk mail?

epistasis9• 1 day ago

This is shocking and scary amount government over reach, to fabricate evidence of something that everyone knows is false...

We are really through the looking glass here, folks. Watch the confirmation hearings where potential appointees are asked to simply state factually who won the 2020 residential election. The amount of dissembling, avoidance, and inability to say that the emperor has no clothes..... it's just shocking.

This sort of rank corruption, of turning a government against its own people to subvert democracy... that more people aren't out in the streets about this makes me quite angry. We live in a state of continual shock of how bad things have gotten, I guess

wat100007• 1 day ago

The problem is that everyone doesn't know this to be false. A substantial portion of the population "knows" it to be true.

RajT883• 1 day ago

Agree. Signs and flags around my neighborhood after 2020, "Trump won, you know it and I know it".

ETA: Why the downvotes? It's true, and I have photos of the signs. These people exist.

luxuryballs4• 1 day ago

The problem is that if you look with an inquisitive eye without having a preference on the outcome there's no way to tell because of the margins in just a few districts, all that is sure is that the Constitution was followed and the valid electors chose the President (which is a major reason why it is designed that way).

Covzire2• 1 day ago

Because California has systematically made it impossible to audit elections there.

You have to be disinformed to think elections there are secure, you can't possibly know they are.

quickthrowman• 1 day ago

The problem is that everyone doesn't know this to be false. A substantial portion of the population "knows" it to be true.

If they choose to believe a histrionic liar, that’s their problem. The rest of us don’t have to entertain their credulousness and ignorance. Repeating lies doesn’t make them true, it only makes credulous people believe it. Once the aggrieved-in-chief victim of the century is out of office, the theatrics around election fraud will cease.

iso16313• 1 day ago

This is shocking

Is it really? Have you been asleep for the last decade?

epistasis9• 1 day ago

Having ICE buy data from a data broker to fabricate evidence for a well disproven conspiracy theory? This is still shocking, absolutely shocking!

I will retain my right to be shocked and angry about government overreach, thanks.

flumpcakes• 1 day ago

US politics is cooked. I wonder if polymarket will start taking bets on mid-terms being canceled.

moate2• 1 day ago

Why would you wonder that: https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-2026-midterm-elections...

Of course they are.

gcanyon3• 1 day ago

Wow, 97% that there will be elections. That's high, but if you handed me a gun with a 3% chance of being loaded and offered me a billion dollars to point it at my head and pull the trigger, I would not. My foot on the other hand...

paulryanrogers2• 1 day ago

They only need to cancel the results they don't like.

Trasmatta• 1 day ago

There's no mechanism that could possibly cancel the mid-terms. What we should worry about is the election being interfered with, and swayed by intimidation and disinformation, NOT being cancelled.

thomascgalvin• 1 day ago

Ah yes, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that famous election security wing of the US Government

ceejayoz2• 1 day ago

We called them Sturmabteilung in the original German.

nozzlegear• 1 day ago

Sturmabteilung: German, literally 'storm division.' A German Nazi paramilitary force formed in 1921, whose members were known in English as Brownshirts.

The ICE comparison is spot on, IMO.

garciasn• 1 day ago

https://archive.is/2L3sU

More information:

Target Data Collected

According to procurement records initially reviewed by 404 Media, the system allows continuous monitoring of the following personal data points: [1]

Names and addresses

Social Security numbers

Ethnicities

Geolocation information

Social media activity [1]

https://www.change.org/p/demand-thomson-reuters-cancel-its-1...

croes• 1 day ago

Is ICE the correct agency for voter fraud?

jzebedee• 1 day ago

No, of course not. They have zero domestic police authority for US citizens.

FireBeyond2• 1 day ago

Meanwhile they run around pulling people over for "traffic violations" and then pulling a "Your taillights are out, and papers, please."

moate2• 1 day ago

Whatever the conclusion of "is ICE the correct agency for..." the answer is no. But you use the brownshirts for things regular civil servants would gum up with protests and procedure adhering to the actual law.

hightrix2• 1 day ago

No. But framing them as such is setting the stage for them to be involved in the upcoming midterm elections. That's the whole point of this fishing expedition.

stldev2• 1 day ago

That's the one murdering innocent civilians in the streets? That's the one locking up thousands and denying basic human rights?

No. They're not the 'correct agency' for anything.

cassepipe• 1 day ago

No, it's the FDA's role, as everybody knows

vaadu• 1 day ago

ICE will say their mandate in this context is to ensure that non-US citizens are not on state voter rolls.

ICE knows illegals are less inclined to register to vote knowing that ICE monitors voter rolls.

dofm3• 1 day ago

Has this always been ICE responsibility?

tencentshill• 1 day ago

Of course not, but ICE is the weapon of choice. A loyal, armed goon squad seemingly unconstrained by law compared to other agencies.

superkuh• 1 day ago

And now the FBI has announced they will not investigate any crimes that ICE commits.

jeffbee2• 1 day ago

ICE is less than 25 years old.

dofm3• 1 day ago

Of course, sorry but — rephrasing slightly for clarity — has it been their bailiwick since they were created? Like, is illegal voting an immigration law violation, or is this just Trump projecting a new responsibility onto his independently funded army?

luxuryballs4• 1 day ago

Well there's obviously at least some amount of fraud and a lot of people with eyes on it so finding it seems like the best course of action at the moment, mostly due to the latter since millions of people trusting the elections is pretty important AND if they are verifiably secure it prevents people from running their mouth about it and swaying anyone to distrust them (had to get ahead of it).

But really if you compare the US with the first country your mind thinks of when you think if trustworthy elections we have a long way to go and spending money and time looking for the weak spots is the correct start.

This is an example of the minimum viable amount of effort that should go into this:

"Belgium who was little known that time received more votes than mathematically predicted. So the members of the counting authority took out the magnetic cards and started counting again. After several hours they found that the vote total for every candidate was exactly the same before except for Maria Vindevogel. For Maria Vindevogel, the number of recounted vote was less than the original by 4096 number of votes. How this inflation in votes becomes possible even? What went wrong? Computer experts were brought in to run extensive tests to check the programme. They combed through the code but no bug was detected. Then they tested the hardware again and again."

https://scotopia.in/journal/journalbkend/paper_list/v-4-i-1(...

HEmanZ3• 1 day ago

So much of this noise tho bakes in the assumption that we weren’t already doing voter fraud detection. If my parents are a decent gauge, this is the entire lie the right wing is trying to push: that there has never been rails against voter fraud. That there isn’t a massive amount of machinery already preventing it. And, by acting like “oh now we’re doing something” and ignoring prior work it allows them to put on a captivating dog and pony show for the base that desperately wants to believe the elections are rigged.

It would be like declaring “we are taking the big step of installing smoke alarms in every school in America!” when there are already smoke alarms in every school. You just want the political noise for a base that is too dumb to realize you’re not doing anything new.

luxuryballs4• 1 day ago

for the sake of the smart ones can we at least check? or how much intelligence does one need in order to qualify as a citizen worthy of trustable elections?

jmyeet• 1 day ago

When I was young, I thought mandatory voting was silly. It made uninformed people vote. Well, certainly in this case, I was the uninformed person because seeing how non-mandatory voting works (in the US) should convinced everyone that voting should be mandatory.

The history of the US is one of voter suppression. Women couldn't vote. After Emancipation, barriers were put in to stop black people from voting (so-called "grandfather" laws). We got the Voting Rights Act for a reason. Many reasons actually.

All the way back in the Reagan era we had the Republican Party engaging in voter disenfranchisement with, for example, the Ballot Security Task Force [1]. This was part of the reason why we needed federal preclearance until John Roberts and his Heritage Foundation henchmen decided that it was impossible to prove racism or disenfrachisement.

We continue this by not only removing the voting rights of felons (which should be unconstitutional) but we pass around lists of names of felons and strike off people from electoral rolls for having names that sound similar to that of a felon from a completely different state.

There is no widespread voter fraud. There is widespread voter disenfranchisement. All of this is just a pretext for stealing elections. We'll se on January 3rd if the current House Speaker refuses to certify results and swear in new members when the Republicans lose in a landslide. Or we see more shenanigans like in the 2020 election to overturn the presidential election.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force

stldev2• 1 day ago

This isn't about "finding" fraud.

This is about instilling fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Varelion2• 1 day ago

This process has been carried out, publicly, a few times. Every time the results not only fail to support the current regime's narrative, they actively goes against it. So, the question becomes: "Who is getting kickbacks for this 'deal'?"

More importantly, how in the hell it this under the purview of ICE? Agencies and units have strictly outlined mission statements they are not supposed to go outside of. What kind of secret police nonsense it this?

EDIT: Word choice & spelling

pstuart• 1 day ago

ICE is Trump's private army, and their only loyalty is to him (and Stephen Miller, who's actually the puppet master here).

All of this is a painful lessons that institutions are not things, they are agreements and if someone with enough power does not agree than the institution is reshaped by that disagreement.

imglorp• 1 day ago

They are trying to confuse voter fraud with election fraud so they can justify ICE election interference in November.

There are only a small handful of voter fraud cases per year: someone tried to vote for a dead relative or whatever. Never enough to change an outcome. https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/how-many-cases-of-...

On the other hand, potentially far more impactful is election fraud and election interference. Tampering with voting machines (Coffee GA, Tina Peters etc), paying voters (Musk in PA), asking a state to "find more votes" (GA), ...

Varelion2• 1 day ago

I can't believe this is how the guise of democracy in this country dies.

morkalork• 1 day ago

I'm still suspicious of actions like this: https://abcnews.com/US/dominion-voting-systems-sold-company-...

prmoustache• 1 day ago

In a world where most people blindly accept answers from machines and never care to verify from actual sources the simple announcement effect followed by lies and accusations of fraud relayed repeatedly is enough. The whole mode of operations of extreme rights all over the world is to repeat lies ad nauseam until people unconsciously surrender and accept them as facts.

kstenerud• 1 day ago

They don't need to prove that it's true. They just need to get it repeated enough, with some officialdom thrown in, for it to enter the public consciousness as "true".

The next step is to go dark on data about ICE, immigration, and voter fraud so that nobody can prove the opposite anymore.

This is a very old playbook, and it works extremely well.

opinion3k• 1 day ago

Because he's turned them into his own secret police - they even wear masks to hide their identifies. Fun fact - ICE has only been around for a little over 20 years. It's not some sancrosanct entity that couldn't have its necessary functions moved to entities with some sort of actual oversight and eliminated.

dd8601fn• 1 day ago

Anywhere you move it, it's executive branch stuff.

I'm not sure what a bureaucratic shuffle would buy you in today's environment.

joquarky2• 1 day ago

Anyone else remember when defenders of the PATRIOT Act said it would only affect terrorists?

shalmanese• 10 hours ago

ICE was a reshuffle of the INS and a few ancillary departments but the core functions are continuous. It's like saying Meta has only been around for 5 years, most of the engineers were doing their previous job unchanged by the rebrand.

preg_match2• 1 day ago

ICE has been basically transformed into the FBI but mostly targeting American citizens. The goal has been, for a while now, to develop a domestic military and intelligence apparatus that can be used against the American people where they are - in their cities, in their states.

The police largely failed this job. Too local, too much accountability if you can believe it. The government really wants a federal force, beholden only to the desires of the dictator. The constitution gets in the way a bit, as you can't just deploy the military domestically against the US people. So ICE it is.

wnevets• 1 day ago

Its time to abolish ICE.

ansuman441• 1 day ago

There are lot of ways to do it, but the biggest challenge is will they do it? like it's mostly a descision rather than capabilities.

jimnotgym• 1 day ago

ICE have jurisdiction over elections now?

aqme28• 1 day ago

That's what happens when you make them the most highly-funded police force in the world. They start looking around for new jurisdictions.

cosmicgadget5• 1 day ago

ICE shipping out to Hormuz when.

ck2• 1 day ago

Our country is now a clown show

Heritage Foundation, you know those super-left liberals, already did this and found like a hundred votes max over a decade and most of those were pure accidents and not intentional fraud, certainly not able to sway elections even by accident

I previously felt there was a suitable purpose for a small tiny ICE like Obama-sized era

But now I'm with the abolish folks, it's 100% irredeemable and between them executing people without repercussions and a budget larger than many critical organizations, just delete them completely and start over.

gcanyon3• 1 day ago

If they will pay me $10 million I will guarantee to find voter fraud or refund half their money...

JSR_FDED• 1 day ago

It’s Cyber Ninjas all over again

cosmicgadget5• 1 day ago

And Cyber Symposium. Oh man, those were the days, when "ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!" claims were met with laughter instead of Joe Rogan saying "wild".

vrganj• 1 day ago

How is this immigration enforcement?

I see they're no longer bothering to even put up the slightest bit of pretense ICE is anything but Trump's brownshirts, a group of goons to brutalize and intimidate any opposition to his antidemocratic project.

legitster2• 1 day ago

The product we're talking about here is CLEAR.

And one of the deep ironies is that CLEAR is already highly deployed at the state level, among other things, to verify voter identity and prevent voter fraud!

DHS and ICE also ostensibly already use CLEAR for a variety of other purposes - what's novel here isn't that they are getting access to new data, it's that they want to backseat drive on investigations the states are already conducting, using only a subset of the data the states already use.

dweinus• 1 day ago

Why is this flagged?

thrance• 1 day ago

HN ownership is complicit. They've been censoring everything "political" recently, as it becomes harder and harder to rationalize this regime's exactions. Used to be that such links would show up in the front page of /active daily, now there can be weeks without any passing by.

comrade1234• 1 day ago

Would be nice to get in on some of this grift...

xtiansimon• 11 hours ago

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.

ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud

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