Supreme Court Allows DHS to Use Expanded Database for Voter Verification
The Supreme Court decided on Friday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can employ a broader database to identify and remove illegal aliens and non-citizens from voter rolls.
This ruling permits DHS to utilize its enhanced voter citizenship verification system, known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE). This system allows the administration to access Social Security records to confirm voters’ citizenship status. It’s worth noting, however, that this decision likely won’t significantly impact the upcoming midterm elections, as most states are barred from removing anyone from voter lists within 90 days before an election, as reported by The Associated Press. The SAVE program was originally set up to ensure that federal, state, and local agencies do not inadvertently provide benefits to non-citizens. In 2025, the administration broadened its reach, enabling agencies to take measures that would help confirm that only U.S. citizens participate in elections, leading to the scanning of at least 67 million voter registrations.
Interestingly, this same program was designed to prevent benefits from flowing to non-citizens. The recent expansion appeared to enhance efforts to maintain the integrity of electoral processes.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume its expanded voter citizenship verification program, which lets states use Social Security records to check voters’ citizenship. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented.
A U.S. District Court Judge, appointed by Biden, had previously halted the administration’s use of this tool back in June. The judge expressed concerns that it might result in the wrongful removal of citizens from voter rolls and invade Americans’ privacy rights.
According to the high court, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 permits DHS to collect citizenship and immigration data from various federal agencies.
The majority opinion emphasized that “Under section 1373(c), the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters. The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”
Three justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. In her dissent, Jackson observed, “The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.”
Recently, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported charging 16 individuals across seven states for illegally voting or registering to vote using false claims about their citizenship. These cases were filed in various states, including Massachusetts, Texas, Idaho, Georgia, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Michigan.
In a separate incident, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a woman named Mariana Alexandra Dewey on September 1, who allegedly voted unlawfully in the 2024 presidential election.
In August, New Jersey’s Governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, revealed that 220 non-citizens had a record of voting illegally in the state, according to sources.
