The Trump administration has, for the primary time ever, constructed a searchable nationwide citizenship information system.
The device, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed for use by state and native election officers to provide them a better approach to make sure solely residents are voting. Nevertheless it was developed quickly with out a public course of, and a few of these officers are already worrying about what else it may very well be used for.
NPR is the primary information group to report the small print of the brand new system.
For many years, voting officers have famous that there was no nationwide citizenship record to match their state lists to, so to confirm citizenship for his or her voters, they both wanted to ask individuals to supply a delivery certificates or a passport — one thing that might disenfranchise thousands and thousands — or use a fancy patchwork of disparate information sources.
Now, the Division of Homeland Safety is providing one other approach.
DHS, in partnership with the White Home’s Division of Governmental Effectivity (DOGE) workforce, has not too long ago rolled out a collection of upgrades to a community of federal databases to permit state and county election officers to shortly examine the citizenship standing of their whole voter lists — each U.S.-born and naturalized residents — utilizing information from the Social Safety Administration in addition to immigration databases.
Such integration has by no means existed earlier than, and consultants name it a sea change that inches the U.S. nearer to having a roster of residents — one thing the nation has by no means embraced. A centralized nationwide database of Individuals’ private info has lengthy been thought-about a 3rd rail — particularly to privateness advocates in addition to political conservatives, who’ve historically opposed mass information consolidation by the federal authorities.
Authorized consultants informed NPR they had been alarmed {that a} improvement of this magnitude was already underway with out a clear and public course of.
“That could be a debate that should play out in a public setting,” mentioned John Davisson, the director of litigation on the nonprofit Digital Privateness Info Middle. “It is one which deserves public scrutiny and daylight, that deserves the participation of elected representatives, that deserves alternatives for the general public to weigh in by public remark and testimony.”
When federal businesses plan to gather or use Individuals’ private information in new methods, there are procedures they’re required to observe beforehand, together with giving public discover.
One other privateness skilled, College of Virginia Faculty of Legislation professor Danielle Citron, known as this information aggregation effort a “hair on hearth” improvement. She informed NPR she has questions if the venture itself is lawful.
Many different questions in regards to the new system stay, together with which states plan to make use of it and the way, what kind of information safety measures are being taken and the way reliable the information the device gives will probably be. It is also unknown what the federal authorities plans to do with the voter information after they have been run by the system.
The latest historical past of elections is littered with failed information matching efforts, typically pushed by false fraud narratives, which have entangled eligible voters. The primary Trump administration tried the beginnings of the same information venture, although the hassle shuttered after most states balked at sharing their voter information.
The truth that the event and rollout observe President Trump’s falsehoods about widespread noncitizen voting makes election consultants cautious of how this new device will work.
“We have by no means had a listing of U.S. residents to match our voter registration lists to,” mentioned Kim Wyman, the previous Republican secretary of state of Washington who’s now a senior fellow on the Bipartisan Coverage Middle. “It looks as if it takes the federal authorities extra than simply (just a few) months to have the ability to make a complete nationwide database of data that is going to be correct … That is what my concern is, simply firstly, that the record is correct.”
Potential voters get info at a voter registration occasion on October 22, 2024 at Cal State Los Angeles in Los Angeles.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
cover caption
toggle caption
Frederic J. Brown/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Everybody registering to vote should swear, beneath penalty of perjury, that they’re a U.S. citizen. The results for noncitizens who attempt to vote embody fines, jail time and deportation. Officers say that deterrent is why circumstances of ineligible individuals casting ballots are extremely uncommon — a undeniable fact that’s turn out to be more and more obvious as extra and extra states commit sources to uncovering the few those who slip by the cracks each election. Analysis has additionally proven that when noncitizens do vote, it is typically to not commit fraud however moderately as a result of they misunderstood eligibility guidelines.
Trump and his allies have continued to emphasise the problem. The Justice Division has prioritized its prosecution and Republican lawmakers are pushing new laws at each the nationwide and state degree to require individuals present proof of citizenship as a way to register to vote.
If this new device is profitable, it may present native and state governments a robust methodology to examine the citizenship of just about all Individuals with out extra documentation necessities.
“Taking that burden of proof, if you’ll, off the voter … is an efficient factor,” mentioned Wyman, who additionally labored for the Division of Homeland Safety on election safety points within the Biden administration.
However she famous {that a} nationwide citizenship record and something resembling a nationwide voter registration record have been controversial concepts for a very long time, so the Trump administration is wading into uncharted waters.
“All of us that stay on this free nation and this free society need to imagine that there are some privateness rights which can be nonetheless being upheld in our lives,” Wyman mentioned. “The eye to element issues right here in lots of, many massive methods.”
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which is beneath the Division of Homeland Safety, is managing the device. The company didn’t present extra details about the way it will work when contacted by NPR. In a press release, spokesman Matthew Tragesser known as the event a “recreation changer” and mentioned the company seems ahead to “implementing extra updates.”
“USCIS is transferring shortly to get rid of profit and voter fraud among the many alien inhabitants,” Tragesser mentioned.
What SAVE did and what it does now
This new citizenship examine functionality comes from an enormous growth of a device voting officers solely used sparingly prior to now.
The device, generally known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, is a system of DHS databases that state and federal businesses have queried for the reason that Eighties to examine the immigration standing of noncitizens dwelling within the U.S. legally. Companies can then determine if the candidates are eligible for various authorities advantages.
For roughly the previous decade, some voting officers have additionally used SAVE to examine the citizenship of voters on their rolls, often in cases the place division of motorcar information indicated a voter is a noncitizen, since these information typically aren’t up to date when an individual naturalizes. Election officers may use SAVE to get a more moderen immigration snapshot, which might both confirm that an individual had turn out to be a citizen and was certainly eligible to vote, or if no naturalization report was discovered, point out to the official that they need to attain out to the voter about whether or not they’re a citizen.
However utilizing SAVE for this kind of verification was unwieldy.
Election officers throughout the political spectrum complained they didn’t have the precise immigration identification numbers wanted to question the system, and in circumstances the place they did, it was costly and labor intensive to submit one question at a time. Forward of the 2024 election, some Republican-led states ramped up their complaints in regards to the inadequacies of the device. Simply weeks earlier than the election, Texas, Florida and Ohio sued DHS, arguing the Biden administration was failing to assist states confirm their voters’ citizenship.
USCIS started planning upgrades to the system on the finish of the Biden administration, in response to an individual who attended a briefing the place it was mentioned however was not approved to talk to the media. After Trump took workplace, DHS started a collection of standard calls with some state election staffers to speak by potential updates.
A key turning level got here in March, when Trump signed an government order that made sweeping modifications to voting and election protocols, together with requiring DHS to permit states “entry to acceptable methods” for verifying the citizenship of voters on their rolls with out a price, and instructing DOGE to help the company in combing voter rolls for noncitizens.
The order additionally instructed the legal professional basic to prioritize prosecuting noncitizens who register to vote, whether or not they really voted or not, utilizing “databases or info maintained by the Division of Homeland Safety.”
Natalya Kosarevich/Getty Pictures
Inside weeks, USCIS started saying rolling upgrades to SAVE, crediting DOGE with the modifications. On April 22, the company revealed SAVE was now free for non-federal businesses, and will deal with mass checks. Then, a Could 22 information launch introduced SAVE had built-in information from the Social Safety Administration so election officers may question it with a nine-digit Social Safety quantity.
Although the Could information launch did not point out it explicitly, the Social Safety change meant for the primary time SAVE may confirm the citizenship of U.S.-born Individuals with a legitimate Social Safety quantity, which practically each American citizen has.
That improvement is a serious transfer that turned SAVE from a device that solely responded to queries about foreign-born residents or noncitizens into one thing that might comb by whole voter lists. However quite a few state voting officers NPR spoke with weren’t conscious that functionality was a part of the updates.
As not too long ago as late April, a USCIS reality sheet about utilizing SAVE for voting information mentioned the other. “SAVE doesn’t confirm U.S. born residents beneath any circumstances. SAVE doesn’t entry databases that comprise U.S.-born citizen info,” the net web page learn, in response to a snapshot captured by the Web Archive.
That has now been modified. In a model that was final up to date in June, the actual fact sheet now says that wanting up U.S.-born residents is feasible with a Social Safety quantity. “SAVE is ready in lots of circumstances to confirm U.S.-born U.S. residents for voter verification functions, by info accessed by the SSA,” it reads. NPR has not but spoken to a state voting official who has regarded up a U.S.-born citizen on the brand new SAVE platform.
Social Safety Administration information methods can present whether or not an applicant was a citizen or a noncitizen on the time they acquired their quantity, mentioned Kathleen Romig, a former SSA official who works on the liberal-leaning coverage nonprofit Middle on Price range and Coverage Priorities.
The Division of Homeland Safety has mixed that point-in-time citizenship info with SAVE’s capacity to extra totally inform whether or not an individual has naturalized to create a system that voting officers can use to theoretically nail down citizenship standing for voters they’ve Social Safety numbers for.
Upon listening to the small print, quite a few voting information consultants informed NPR it appeared like a system that might work. The query, they are saying, is whether or not high quality management methods are in place to catch the inevitable errors that may come from evaluating tons of of thousands and thousands of information, particularly when the stakes are as excessive as questioning somebody’s citizenship.
There are some identified information challenges with SAVE. As an example, there could be a lag time between when an individual naturalizes and when that info is entered into the system, which might result in the preliminary look that an individual is a noncitizen on the voter rolls in the event that they registered to vote instantly after naturalizing. SAVE supplies additionally clarify there are some foreign-born residents who can’t be verified by the system.
New U.S. residents stand throughout a naturalization ceremony in Chicago on June 25, 2025. Newly naturalized residents might fall by the cracks of the brand new citizenship verification device constructed by the Division of Homeland Safety.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
cover caption
toggle caption
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
USCIS acknowledges these shortfalls and tells customers that if the system returns a solution apart from confirming citizenship, then it should even be manually reviewed by USCIS employees, and the elections workplace should contact the voter to provide them an opportunity to supply proof of citizenship.
It is also unclear how dependable or full the information coming from the Social Safety Administration is, as a result of as MIT election skilled Charles Stewart notes, that information in addition to the information inside SAVE and on the voter rolls was collected independently and with out this kind of integration in thoughts. A report from the Institute for Responsive Authorities famous not too long ago that the SSA solely started including citizenship tags to information roughly 40 years in the past, so the company’s information on natural-born residents could also be incomplete.
“The priority with any of those data-based matching procedures is that individuals who do not know a lot about voter registration datasets simply assume that the information are clear on (all) sides,” mentioned Stewart.
Probably the most notable election information matching success story, a program known as the Digital Registration Info Middle (ERIC), took a number of years to develop and roll out. The system permits its greater than two dozen member states to share authorities information throughout state traces, to get rid of lifeless voters from the rolls, discover the few individuals in each federal election who illegally vote twice, and likewise register eligible voters after they transfer to a brand new place.
9 Republican-led states have since pulled out of the group as a result of viral falsehoods that unfold on the far-right and basic uneasiness about having a 3rd social gathering combing by state voter rolls. At the least two of these states, Louisiana and Texas, are early piloters of this new information device run by the federal authorities. The states haven’t disclosed many particulars and declined NPR’s interview requests.
DHS says to date it has run greater than 9 million voter information by the upgraded SAVE system, in response to an individual who attended a briefing in regards to the new capabilities who was not approved to talk to the media, and that early evaluation discovered these information to comprise 99.99% U.S. residents. That evaluation has not been independently verified, and it is not clear if any of the few noncitizens they did discover ever really voted.
“If this rolls out and it seems that our voter rolls are fairly darn correct … and it’s shouted from the mountaintops and other people imagine it, then that will be massive,” mentioned Tammy Patrick, an election skilled on the nonprofit Election Middle and former Arizona voting official. She famous nonetheless that there are massive monetary incentives, each for candidates and for grassroots election denial teams and influencers, to maintain pushing deceptive claims about noncitizen voting.
“My concern is that I am not so positive that there will probably be those that will imagine it, that there will probably be those that will cease elevating donations and marketing campaign funds on the narrative of fear-mongering and the illegitimacy of our methods,” Patrick mentioned.
Most states cannot use the brand new SAVE capabilities but as a result of they do not acquire full Social Safety numbers as a part of the voter registration course of.
However the subsequent SAVE improve will enable election officers to question with simply the final 4 digits of a Social Safety quantity, along with a full identify and birthdate, in response to two individuals who had been on calls the place such plans had been mentioned however requested to not be named as a result of they weren’t approved to talk publicly in regards to the plan. Such an growth will make the citizenship searches out there for all voting officers, though there’s a variety throughout the nation in relation to how a lot of a state’s voter information have even partial Social Safety numbers related to them.
Future plans additionally embody integrating state DMV information, in response to the identical sources, and Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem is predicted to succeed in out to each state’s chief election official quickly encouraging them to run their rolls by the system.
Some Republican election officers have been completely happy that DHS is taking their considerations about SAVE severely. Idaho’s Republican Secretary of State Phil McGrane used SAVE extensively forward of the 2024 election, however discovered it tough to make use of.
“This wasn’t what the database was meant for and we had been asking one thing of it that it actually wasn’t designed for,” McGrane informed NPR in early June. “Now there’s consideration being put to it to make it work that approach.”
Nevertheless when NPR reached out extra not too long ago to ask about SAVE’s new broader citizenship examine capabilities, a spokesperson for McGrane’s workplace, Chelsea Carattini, mentioned the secretary had not been briefed or made conscious of these modifications by the federal authorities.
Who will get to know what’s being constructed
Whereas USCIS denied NPR’s interview request in regards to the modifications and has sporadically shared updates with some state voting officers, a DHS staffer gave a full briefing in regards to the device to an influential group identified for pushing false and deceptive election fraud narratives.
On June 12, the Election Integrity Community, a grassroots group led by conservative legal professional Cleta Mitchell, who labored with Trump to attempt to overturn the 2020 election, hosted a digital occasion with David Jennings, who oversees the SAVE system. Democracy Docket first reported the briefing.
NPR additionally acquired audio of Mitchell seemingly talking about Jennings at an earlier Election Integrity Community occasion in Could. The nonprofit investigative group Documented, which frequently acquires audio of Mitchell’s occasions, supplied a recording to NPR.
“He’s in command of the SAVE database that has the citizenship information for, , all people,” Mitchell mentioned on the Could occasion. “And he’s within the means of reconfiguring your complete (factor) in order that we are able to really decide who on the voter rolls is and isn’t a citizen.”
Voting consultants NPR spoke with expressed concern that the company overseeing the creation of the voter information device was sharing particulars with a bunch concerned with denying the 2020 election outcomes, however not the American public.
“Earlier than the federal authorities simply up and creates an enormous information system that purports to be a report on all of us — that is a public dialog that we’re owed,” mentioned Justin Levitt, a Loyola Legislation Faculty professor and former Biden White Home adviser on voting rights. “And never simply as a public coverage matter, as an ethical matter, as a authorized matter.”
Beneath the Privateness Act of 1974, there’s a formal course of generally known as a system of information discover, for federal businesses to provide public discover about new methods they intend to gather or use Individuals’ private info. No such discover seems to have been printed for the improve to SAVE that integrates Social Safety information, and neither USCIS or SSA responded to an NPR inquiry asking if a brand new one had been issued.
Knowledge unknowns
The SAVE improve is an element of a bigger pattern, led by DOGE, of the Trump administration taking unprecedented steps to amass and join information throughout the federal authorities. The hassle has sparked over a dozen lawsuits and cybersecurity considerations.
The general public officers condemning the information consolidation have principally been Democrats, nonetheless, which is a departure from previous privateness debates in American historical past.
“One factor that is moderately putting about these strikes round information within the current is that there was so little outcry really on the fitting, who’ve been kind of the usual bearers of fear about massive authorities and information merging and information assortment to start with,” mentioned Sarah Igo, a historical past professor at Vanderbilt College.
One conservative voice who’s expressing such considerations is Catherine Engelbrecht, the founding father of the nonprofit True the Vote, which has pushed quite a few election conspiracy theories over the previous decade.
Engelbrecht praised the SAVE effort in a latest publication, however expressed discomfort in regards to the administration’s efforts to centralize numerous federal databases and provides entry to the contractor Palantir.
“Such centralization of information poses a risk to particular person freedoms and privateness,” she wrote. “Surrendering our information to unchecked energy is not only a technical threat — it is a ethical failure.”
One of many greatest questions in regards to the new SAVE is what occurs to the voter information that states and counties add to the system, significantly since it’s now designed to confirm whole state voter rolls.
USCIS specifies that it retains information of SAVE queries for 10 years. The company didn’t reply to NPR’s questions on whether or not it’ll maintain copies of state voter rolls uploaded to SAVE, or whether or not it’ll use info states present by the system as a foundation for legal or immigration investigations.
A state election official who was not approved to talk publicly in regards to the improvement informed NPR they had been particularly nervous about how the administration would use info supplied by states in immigration crackdown efforts. For that purpose, the official, who has labored in each Republican and Democratic administrations, mentioned they anticipated there to be a transparent partisan division by which states use it, even when all election officers have the identical aim of correct voter rolls.
“If I believed this database was correct, and that I used to be going to get good usable info from it, you are rattling proper I might use it,” the official mentioned. “The query is, is the information usable? And (usable) in a approach that I am not going to jeopardize individuals who stay in my jurisdiction?”
Have info you need to share with NPR? Attain out to those authors by encrypted communication on Sign. Miles Parks is at milesparks.10 and Jude Joffe-Block is at JudeJB.10. Please use a nonwork gadget.
