Voter rolls are becoming the new battleground over secure elections as amateur sleuths hunt fraud

A group has been impersonating government officials, harassing New York residents at their homes and falsely accusing them of breaking the law, state officials have warned.

But what sounds like a scam aimed at people’s pocketbooks is actually part of a shakedown with a much different target: voters.

State prosecutors have sent a cease-and-desist order to a group called New York Citizens Audit demanding that it halt any “unlawful voter deception” and “intimidation efforts.”

It’s the type of tactic that concerns many state election officials across the country as conservative groups, some with ties to allies of former President Donald Trump and motivated by false claims of widespread fraud in 2020, push to access and sometimes publish state voter registration rolls, which list names, home addresses and in some cases party registration. One goal is to create free online databases for groups and individuals who want to take it upon themselves to try to find potential fraud.

The lists could find their way into the hands of malicious actors and individual efforts to inspect the rolls could disenfranchise voters through intimidation or canceled registrations, state election officials and privacy advocates warned. They worry that local election offices may be flooded with challenges to voter registration listings as those agencies prepare for the 2024 elections.

Baseless claims of widespread voter fraud are part of what’s driving the efforts to obtain the rolls.

In New York, a warning from the state elections board preceded the cease-and-desist letter from the state attorney general’s office. Voters in 13 counties had been approached at their homes in recent weeks in an apparently coordinated effort by people impersonating election officials, in some cases wielding phony IDs, the board said. Residents were confronted about their voter registration status and accused of misconduct.

In one instance, people wearing identification badges accused a woman at her Glens Falls home of committing a crime by apparently being registered to vote in two counties, said Warren County spokesman Don Lehman. But the woman had already filed to change her registration and canvassers were apparently using out-of-date information, he said.

“She was quite shaken by the whole thing,” Lehman said.