Illegally registered voters + mainstream journalism = buried lede

Most of the Reuters story deals with a potential 180,000 voters on the rolls who are not legal residents.  The last line of the story is perhaps the most interesting:

Cate said some Florida officials have asked the Obama administration to grant the state access to databases maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help determine who is a citizen.

"We've been requesting access, but have so far been denied," he said.

I can imagine legitimate reasons that Homeland Security would not share this information.

If the actual reason is that correlating voter registration rolls with databases showing legal residence is "racist" then I don't count that as a legitimate reason.

Props to the press for even running the story, but we need more information on that caboose of a lede.