Some of the NDS’s work is even more opaque,
including an apparent redesign of the federal government’s voting registration hub.
A sign-in page run by the studio on a White House-controlled web address carries the title
“Log in to vote.gov preview”.
Above the password field is a notice: “For official use only. Actions will be recorded in accordance with applicable law.”
Vote.gov is a federal voter registration website.
By law it belongs to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC),
an independent, bipartisan body that Congress established in 2002 after the disputed 2000 election.
Congress created the commission specifically so no sitting president would control the federal voter-registration system.
The studio’s version has been live on White House systems since
17 September 2025, according to public records of secure web addresses.
Late last year, the NDS began presenting its system to state election directors.
The first such briefing, on 17 October, was on a call of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED).
Call notes summarising the meeting record members representing states of both parties expressing
“serious concerns with this project not complying with state law”
and noting that
“the developers do not seem to want to spend the time to understand election official concerns”.
Brianna Schletz,
the Election Assistance Commission’s executive director,
reportedly told state directors on the same call that the conversations were “informal”,
and that commissioners would later vote on whether to stay involved.
No record of any such vote has since appeared in the commission’s public proceedings.
Asked for comment by the Guardian,
a NASED spokesperson, Amy Cohen,
confirmed by email that
“NASED held a call in October joined by representatives from the National Design Studio and members of the EAC leadership team”.
Cohen added:
“NASED does not have a position on this project.
NASED has had no further communication with the National Design Studio on this or any other project;
both NASED as an organization and our members in their individual capacities engage with the EAC regularly about a variety of different topics and projects.”
Six days after the
17 October meeting,
on 23 October,
a National Design Studio engineer, Akash Bobba,
reportedly briefed the system on a recorded conference call organised by the
National Association of Secretaries of State.
Under the studio’s design, voters would be required to verify their identity through Login.gov,
the federal sign-in gateway,
and to have their citizenship checked against a database run by the Department of Homeland Security.
Asked on the call what the federal government would retain of the personal information voters entered into the system,
Bobba reportedly said that
“clear data retention policies” would be given to states ahead of implementation,
but conceded:
“I don’t know what they retain and what they are logging.”
The Election Assistance Commission has been part of the discussions.
Its chair, Donald Palmer, reportedly said the commission was
“facilitating discussion with state election officials on modernizing an accessible tool to provide a verifiable digital registration option”.
The Guardian contacted the Election Assistance Commission for comment but received no response.
The EPIC’s Davisson said:
“With vote.gov, that’s the province of the Election Assistance Commission.
But if you’re centralizing that in the White House, the White House is going to have sort of access to that backbone of data.
He added:
“Doing that outside of the appropriate channels,
I think, is definitely going to
– it’s dangerous
and it’s going to erode trust.”
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 put
voter-registration administration under an independent bipartisan commission,
structurally outside the reach of any sitting president.
The studio’s version appears to collapse this arm’s-length arrangement.
The Guardian has not seen what is on the other side of the sign-in,
but published Cisa records show who runs the system it lives on,
which is under White House control.
The commission Congress put in charge of vote.gov has not decided to formally participate in the initiative.
The build itself is on White House systems.
#posthog #AkashBobba #nds #doge #tracking #surveillance
