Database could be used to regulate opponents, from ‘shutting off bank accounts’ to healthcare, official warns

Donald Trump is attempting to select his own citizenry and control who can vote by gathering the personal details of all Americans, Arizona’s top election official has warned.

Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, fears that the Trump administration’s active efforts to forcibly extract voter files from 30 states including Fontes’s own are part of a bigger plan to gather vital information on all US citizens into a centralised database. “Trump is trying to amass a master list that will allow him to declare someone an enemy of the state,” he said.

In his 19th-floor office in Phoenix, Fontes said that in his view Trump wants to create the equivalent of “apartheid in the United States” and likened his actions to those of his counterpart in North Korea. With personal information on all Americans at his disposal, the president could regulate key aspects of the lives of his opponents, including “shutting off their bank accounts, or keeping them from getting healthcare”.

“This is Donald Trump trying to pick his own voters,” he said.