President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow states to resume using a federal citizenship database to identify potential noncitizens on voter rolls ahead of the November midterm elections.
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The Justice Department is seeking to overturn lower-court rulings blocking expanded use of the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE. The administration has made the system a central part of its efforts to help states verify that registered voters are U.S. citizens.
Solicitor General John Sauer called the lower court’s decision “indefensible” and argued that preventing states from accessing the expanded system “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections.”
The Trump administration expanded SAVE to allow states to submit voter lists in bulk and incorporated additional federal data, including Social Security records, to conduct citizenship checks. Previously, election officials generally had to conduct individual searches using specific immigration identification numbers.
A federal judge blocked the expanded system in June, finding that the administration’s use of Social Security data violated federal privacy law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld that decision in a 2-1 ruling Friday.
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Voting-rights groups challenging the program contend the database can produce inaccurate results and potentially flag eligible U.S. citizens, particularly naturalized citizens, as possible noncitizens. They argue those errors could force legitimate voters to prove their citizenship or risk being removed from voter rolls.
Republican-led states seeking access to SAVE have said citizenship information returned by the system would be subject to additional verification before a voter could be removed.
Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Even before the Trump administration’s expansion, election authorities in several states had used SAVE for voter registration or voter-list maintenance.
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