INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Voting rights advocates on Thursday said a data request by two top state officials could violate federal election law depending on what they do with the data.

Attorney General Todd Rokita and Secretary of State Diego Morales on Thursday announced they sent a letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Oct. 11 requesting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) review the citizenship status of 585,774 Indiana voters. The letter indicated Rokita and Morales, both Republicans, attached a list of registered voters who either registered without a providing a driver’s license number, were overseas, or registered without providing either a driver’s license number or a Social Security number.

Rokita and Morales’ offices both turned down requests for an interview. When News 8 asked what evidence Rokita had of noncitizens voting, a spokesperson replied the point of the inquiry is to determine whether noncitizens are voting in Indiana. Officials with Rokita’s office said they could not provide a demographic breakdown of the affected voters.

Common Cause Indiana Executive Director Julia Vaughn said the effort could jeopardize the registrations of even longtime voters. Vaughn said when she first registered to vote years ago, she did not have to provide either a driver’s license number or a Social Security number.

“Too many eligible citizens don’t participate and when public officials like the attorney general and the secretary of state, our chief election officer, seek to cast doubt on the legitimacy of those votes that are cast, I think that’s sending a horrible message to Indiana voters, and it certainly doesn’t increase public confidence,” Vaughn said, adding she believes the letter was politically motivated.

Indiana League of Women Voters Co-President Linda Hanson said the move could be especially harmful for recently naturalized citizens. She said naturalized citizens often use temporary driver’s licenses before they get their permanent ones, and that could ensnare them in Rokita and Morales’ requested data.

Similar moves in other states already face legal challenges. A provision within the National Voter Registration Act, known as the Quiet Period Provision, prohibits any mass purges of state voter rolls within 90 days of an election. On Wednesday, a federal judge cited the law when she blocked Alabama’s effort to remove 3,251 individuals from its voter rolls. The Alabama Secretary of State claimed those individuals had non-citizen numbers assigned to them, but court documents show more than 700 of those voters subsequently re-registered and returned to active status. In August, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, also a Republican, ordered the commonwealth’s Department of Motor Vehicles to remove any voters who could not verify their citizenship status. That order also now faces a DOJ lawsuit.

Rokita and Morales submitted their request 26 days before election day, which is Nov. 5. Rokita’s office said the officials waited as long as they did because voter registration ended on Oct. 7.

Vaughn and ACLU of Indiana Executive Director Chris Daley said legal challenges to the data request are unlikely unless there is an effort to remove voters between now and Election Day.

In response to News 8’s inquiries, Morales released a statement late Thursday afternoon saying the inquiry is not a voter list maintenance activity and will not result in an effort to remove registrations from the voter registration list. Morales said if any noncitizens are identified, local election officials will be notified, and they will have the option to investigate further.

“The Secretary of State is responding to concerns from county clerks regarding the increase of absentee ballots from overseas voters. The issue became more apparent recently with the commencement of absentee by mail voting and early in-person absentee voting.”

Diego Morales, (R) Secretary of State

Noncitizen voting does happen, but is extremely rare. Following the 2016 election, the Brennan Center for Justice interviewed election administrators in 42 jurisdictions, including 8 of the 10 places with the nation’s highest noncitizen populations. The election administrators told researchers out of more than 23 million ballots cast in those jurisdictions that year, they could only find evidence of about 30 being cast by noncitizens. In August, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced his state had purged some 6,500 suspected noncitizens from its rolls. A subsequent investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica uncovered documents that showed the real number was 581.