Supreme Court Allows Use of Federal Database for Voter Citizenship Checks

The US Supreme Court has lifted restrictions on the Trump administration regarding the use of a federal database that utilizes citizenship information to identify voters suspected of being non-citizens. Critics have raised concerns about the reliability of this data, warning that it may lead to wrongful removals of US citizens from electoral rolls. In June, a federal judge ruled that the system was illegal and violated Americans' privacy rights. However, the Supreme Court's conservative majority determined that the National Voter Registration Act prohibits broad purges of voter rolls shortly before an election, thereby limiting the potential impact of the decision ahead of the midterms. States are still permitted to verify the citizenship of individual voters. The dissenting justices, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, expressed concerns that this ruling could lead to the wrongful disenfranchisement of eligible voters. Jackson stated, "The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the non-existent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take." The Department of Homeland Security's program, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (Save), allows officials to verify voter eligibility. Originally created in 1986 for public benefits verification, the Trump administration expanded its capabilities last year to include bulk searches using sensitive Social Security information. In June, US District Judge Sparkle L Soonnan ruled that the revised system violated privacy rights and threatened voting rights, a ruling that was later overridden by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court concluded that a 1996 law permits the DHS to obtain citizenship and immigration data from federal agencies and has an obligation to respond to states' requests for this information. The use of the Save program by states is voluntary. Voting rights groups have criticized the ruling, calling it "profoundly disappointing" and stating that it risks unlawfully targeting millions of Americans. Lawyers for the Trump administration argue that the system is lawful and necessary to prevent non-citizen voting. Currently, 27 states utilize the system to verify voter citizenship. Critics have highlighted instances where the system has incorrectly identified US citizens as non-citizens. For example, in Travis County, Texas, officials found that at least 10% of nearly 100 flagged voters were actually US citizens. Since implementing the Save system, only three non-citizen voters have been charged with illegal voting in Texas. Some states, such as Georgia, have collaborated with the government on the Save program, with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger emphasizing the thorough vetting of data to ensure accuracy. Raffensperger stated, "There's always guardrails in place, to make sure that we never denied the right to vote." Since taking office, the Trump administration has aimed to reform the US electoral system, including efforts to limit mail-in ballots, which were rejected by the Supreme Court. In 2024, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that 1,930 individuals with a "voter history" had been removed from electoral rolls out of nearly 18 million registered voters, a figure significantly lower than previous claims of hundreds of thousands of non-citizen voters on the rolls.