SCOTUS Allows Trump's Voter Verification System

The Supreme Court on Friday lifted restrictions on a controversial federal voter database before November's elections, granting President Trump a temporary win in his campaign against noncitizen voting. The court's three liberal-leaning justices publicly dissented from the decision, reports the AP. The emergency order allows states, for now, to use the Department of Homeland Security program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, in their efforts to verify the eligibility of voters on their rolls. But because existing law blocks most states from systematically purging voters from their rolls within 90 days of an election, the immediate impact on the upcoming midterms is likely limited.

The court's order puts on hold a federal judge's June ruling that deemed the administration's recently revamped version of SAVE illegal. US District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had blocked the use of the tool, saying it violated Americans' privacy rights and could result in voters being wrongly removed from the rolls. A federal appeals court declined to pause Sooknanan's ruling, prompting the administration's appeal to the Supreme Court. The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that DHS help federal, state, and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. Since the Trump administration moved last year to significantly expand its search abilities, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters.

Some registrants have already been wrongly flagged. In Travis County, Texas, for example, officials said they investigated 97 voters flagged by SAVE as apparent noncitizens and found that at least 10% of them—and likely up to 21%—were US citizens. The county urged the Supreme Court to reject the administration's appeal, while the state of Texas submitted its own brief defending the database. Even though the use of the SAVE program has been blocked for months, the administration said in court filings that DHS officials have continued to use Social Security Administration data "in certain cases to verify information and help determine whether illegal voting may have occurred."