Voters cast their ballots early at The Jeffersonian on Nov. 3, 2022.A lawsuit filed in a federal district court Thursday alleges the Department of Homeland Security has systematically collected sensitive data on Kentucky voters, despite the state’s refusal to share it.In the court filing, voting r ights and electronic privacy groups cited emails and memos obtained from the DHS through records requests.The lawsuit points to an email attachment dated July 6, 2026, which said the DHS investigative unit had “enriched” something from Kentucky and five other states, and the information was “pending Palantir entry into ELITE.”ELITE is a tool developed by AI-company Palantir which they describe as being used for “identifying the location of known foreign nationals who meet criteria for removal.”The voting rights group paired that memo with a recent federal whistleblower disclosure warning lawmakers that DHS employees are being told to use “voter data of dubious origins, that is being compiled with ‘supplemental magic.’”This summer, courts dismissed Department of Justice lawsuits against Kentucky and many other states when election officials refused to hand over unredacted voter data with confidential information.Afterwards, the DOJ said Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams was “under investigation” for not complying with federal demands for sensitive voter data.“We see this as an attempt to work around what courts have found is a violation of the Privacy Act,” Marcia Johnson with the National League of Women Voters said about their lawsuit against DHS.Johnson added that if voting data is used by immigration enforcement agents, it could have a chilling effect at the polls in November.“I could be a citizen, I could be eligible, but I could be concerned about being prevented from voting,” she said.A spokesperson for the Secretary Adams’ office said they are not a party to the suit but offered assurances that Kentucky’s voter rolls have not been improperly accessed or altered. They said they don’t know if the federal government developed its own voter file, but that it wouldn’t impact Kentucky’s elections even if they did. ...read more read less