Supreme Court revives DHS’ database letting states check voters’ citizenship
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesThe Supreme Court issued an order Friday allowing the Department of Homeland Security to keep using a database that lets states scour their voter lists for ineligible noncitizens, saying the system appears to be lawful.
Opponents argued the system trampled on federal privacy laws, illegally scooping up data from other agencies such as Social Security.
They prevailed in lower courts, but the justices said the law allows that sort of sharing between agencies.
People were interested in these podcasts
“Congress necessarily authorized DHS to request and receive that information,” the high court’s majority wrote in an unsigned opinion that labeled the system “important.”
The justices put the lower court rulings on hold while the case develops further.
The database, officially known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, was originally set up to let states check to see if welfare applicants had legal status and enough time in the U.S. to get benefits.
DHS has expanded the system in recent years and now makes it available to states to check their voter rolls.
The court’s three Democratic appointees filed a dissent, written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, accusing the majority of rushing to rescue another legally iffy Trump administration program.
Advertisement Advertisement
She said the majority didn’t take into account the danger in legitimate citizens being hindered in their quest to vote by a wrong answer from the SAVE system.
Migrants who held lawful permanent status and later attained citizenship are eligible to vote by dint of that citizenship, but their records may not reflect that in the DHS system.
Justice Jackson also said she doesn’t think letting SAVE access Social Security records is legal.
She said the “bright side” to the case is that its impact on this year’s election is going to be small.
That’s because another section of law prohibits states from doing systematic, or mass, reviews of their voting lists this close to an election.
Advertisement Advertisement
States can still run individual names about whom concerns have been raised, but no state could run its whole list, or even large sections of its list, against the database until after the election.
In addition to adding records pertaining to potential citizenship status, the Trump administration also made it possible to run batches of names through SAVE — and at no cost.
That made it attractive for a number of GOP-led states that wanted to check their roles.
Democrat-led states, however, have generally resisted running their lists through the system, saying they doubt there’s any significant problem with their lists.
Advertisement Advertisement
Texas, one of the eager GOP states, checked its list last year and flagged 2,724 names it said could be noncitizens — out of nearly 19 million names on the state’s rolls.
When local election officials sent out notices warning they could remove the names, some voters came forward with proof they were actually citizens,
Voting rights advocates, though, worried that other citizens were being stricken without challenging the removal.
When Georgia ran its list, it said it spotted 20 noncitizens out of more than 8 million names on its rolls.
Advertisement Advertisement
Being on the rolls also doesn’t always translate into votes.
New Jersey earlier this year said it had detected 6,600 names of noncitizens it added to its voter rolls due to how its motor vehicle bureau system operated from June 2023 to June 2024. Of those, fewer than 400 cast ballots in the ensuing elections.
President Trump has argued that ineligible voters have skewed the results of U.S. elections, though there is no concrete evidence it has actually happened.
Contact the author
Stephen Dinan
Follow author updates Follow Click to follow. Manage followed authors