The Supreme Court let the Trump administration move ahead with SAVE, which officials could use to flag voter registrations. States need not use it, and federal law bars major registration changes during the 90 days before this year’s midterms, limiting the ruling’s likely impact.
The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program collects citizenship information, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data. Homeland Security has acknowledged the data is imperfect; analysts found recently naturalized citizens incorrectly flagged as noncitizens. A federal judge had previously blocked its use, saying it likely violated privacy rights and could lead to eligible voters being wrongly removed from state rolls.
The administration says SAVE is part of an effort to identify noncitizen voters. Tim Harper of the Center for Democracy & Technology said claims that SAVE uncovered widespread noncitizen voting or proved past election fraud are unsupported; he said noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare and states already maintain rolls through more accurate, privacy-protective methods. The court’s three liberal justices dissented, warning that disenfranchising even a few lawful voters would outweigh any harm to the government from blocking an action it likely lacked authority to take.
