The NAACP formally asked a federal judge to protect voter information seized by the FBI from an election warehouse in Atlanta on Sunday.
The NAACP and other organizations say the documents contain ‘sensitive personal information,’ and asked the judge to impose limits on how the FBI can use the data. Their motion argues the seizure from the Fulton County elections building ‘infringed constitutional protections of privacy, and interfered with the right to vote.’
The motion asks the judge to ‘order reasonable limits on the government’s use of the seized data’ and to prohibit the government from using the data for purposes other than the criminal investigation cited in the search warrant affidavit.
That request includes prohibiting any efforts to use it for voter roll maintenance, election administration or immigration enforcement.
They also requested that the judge order the government to disclose an inventory of all documents and records seized, the identity of anyone who has accessed the records outside of those involved in the criminal investigation, any copying of the records and all efforts to secure the information.
The FBI arrived to the elections warehouse on Jan. 28 with a search warrant for documents relating to the 2020 election, including all ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners that tally the votes, electronic ballot images created when the ballots were counted and then recounted, and all voter rolls.
Sunday’s motion was filed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on behalf of the NAACP, Georgia and Atlanta NAACP organizations, and the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda. It notes that the seizure happened as the Justice Department has been seeking unredacted state voter registration rolls.
Fulton County officials told reporters this month that FBI agents were seen carrying some 700 boxes of ballots from a warehouse near the election hub and loading them into a truck.
Fulton County has also separately sued the FBI in an effort to have the elections documents returned.
Fox News’ Breanne Deppisch and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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