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The State Department has formally cleared the way for its passport records to be used in voter citizenship checks by federal, state and local agencies, under a Privacy Act notice published in the Federal Register on Oct. 23. The new sharing rule does not take effect until Nov. 23, three weeks after the Nov. 3 midterm election, so the change is aimed at the next round of voter roll reviews rather than this one.
The notice rewrites the department’s system of records for passports, now renamed Passport Services Records, State-26. Its most consequential addition is a new “routine use,” the Privacy Act term for a category of disclosure an agency may make without each person’s consent. It allows sharing with “Federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local government agencies, and non-profit organizations, utilizing federal government verification platforms, for the purpose of verifying the identity or citizenship for users accessing government websites and applications, voter eligibility, and other governmental services.”
That sentence turns a file built to issue travel documents into a tool for proving citizenship across government. The department says the changes reflect a move to cloud storage, new Office of Management and Budget breach-notification guidance, and an effort “to clarify the use of passport records in administrative hearings and by additional users for identity verification.”
Why the Nov. 23 date matters
The Privacy Act requires an agency to give the public at least 30 days’ notice and a chance to comment before it starts using a new routine use. Most of the revised notice took effect on publication, but the voter-eligibility provision and two breach-response provisions become effective Nov. 23 “unless comments are received that would require a revision.” Comments are due the same day under docket DOS-2026-1156.
The timing is notable because the plan surfaced as a midterm measure. Fox News reported on Sept. 29 that the department was assessing how to give state and local officials access to passport records to verify voters’ citizenship “ahead of the midterm elections in November,” a plan the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing. A department spokesperson told NewsNation the goal was to share the data in a way that “protects Americans’ data, deters fraud and supports the integrity of U.S. citizenship.” Under the notice’s own terms, the voter-eligibility routine use does not take effect until after the polls close on Nov. 3.
Noncitizen voting is already in the courts. A judge has barred DHS home visits in nine states to people agents believe are citizens, and the Justice Department has sought to remove two Minnesota judges from a noncitizen voting case. Arlington County, Virginia, sued to keep armed federal agents away from its polling places.
What a passport match can and cannot prove
Passport records are strong evidence in one direction. A U.S. passport is issued only after the department adjudicates citizenship, and the file covers native-born applicants, naturalized citizens, people who acquired citizenship abroad through a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, and people issued a Certificate of Loss of Nationality.
The State Department counted 160,668,889 valid U.S. passports in 2023 and issued 24,021,257 in fiscal 2023, the latest figures on its statistics page. One person can hold both a book and a card, so the count reflects documents, not people. To get a perspective the population of US is around 350,000,000 and out of that around 276,000,000 are adults (age 18+). This means around 58% of the adult population in USA hold a valid U.S. passport. It would be safe to guess that at least 70% of people who are naturalized would have applied for the passport since they are most likely to need a passport to travel outside USA to visit their home country. But it is common among immigrants that they don’t apply for the passport immediately after naturalizing. So there would be situations when someone would have voted without having a U.S. passport and in such a situation a system could incorrectly red flag a voter as having voted before become a U.S. citizen. Such situations would need a further check of when they actually naturalized or automatically became citizen through their parents.
The limit of the new use is simple. A match confirms that a voter is a citizen. The absence of a match proves nothing, because a citizen who never applied for a passport has no record in the file. The practical effect is likely to be greatest for naturalized citizens who hold passports, since a passport record gives election officials a federal confirmation of citizenship acquired after birth. The open question is how verification platforms will treat a no-match result, and whether officials will read it as a reason to look further rather than as a sign of ineligibility.
The notice also says the system “does not maintain evidence of travel such as entrance/exit stamps, visas, or residence permits.” It answers whether someone was documented as a citizen, not where that person has been.
The notice does not name the “federal government verification platforms” it has in mind, so the reach of the change will depend on which systems connect and on what terms. That is where any legal challenge is likely to focus.
Dates to track
- Nov. 3: Midterm election; the voter-eligibility routine use is not yet in effect.
- Nov. 23: Comment deadline on docket DOS-2026-1156, and the date the new routine uses take effect unless comments lead the department to revise them.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Federal Register: Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records, Passport Services Records, State-26 (Oct. 23, 2026)
- State Department: Passport reports and statistics (valid passports, 2023; issuance, FY 2023)
- Fox News: State Department considers sharing passport records for voter citizenship checks (Sept. 29, 2026)
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