Bonneville County residents cast their votes during the May 21, 2024, primary election at The Waterfront Event Center in Idaho Falls, Idaho. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
As the midterms approach, Republican and Democratic election officials are split over a powerful federal computer program at the center of President Donald Trump’s quest to expose noncitizen voters and compile lists of voting-age Americans.
A U.S. House Administration Committee hearing Thursday underscored the partisan divide over the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE program. The online tool can verify U.S. citizenship by checking names against a host of government databases.
Republicans have embraced SAVE — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — as an effective new way to identify potential noncitizen voters. But Democrats have spurned it amid fears Trump is building a national voter database and concern that the program wrongly flags U.S. citizens.
Kansas Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon staked out opposing views on SAVE during Thursday’s hearing. Purging noncitizens registered to vote is an ongoing focus of the Trump administration, though studies show noncitizen voting is extremely rare.
Kansas ran its voter roll through SAVE last year after the Trump administration refashioned the program, initially intended to check whether individual noncitizens are eligible for government benefits, into a citizenship verification tool and made it free for states. Schwab said SAVE had led Kansas to identify more than 5,500 registered voters who had died out of state.
“SAVE is one of the most important tools states have to verify voter information,” Schwab told the committee.
But Simon has previously raised concerns about the program. He signed a Dec. 1 letter with 11 other Democratic secretaries of state that said SAVE was likely to degrade rather than enhance state efforts to ensure free, fair and secure elections. The program is likely to misidentify eligible voters and chill voter participation, they wrote.
“I’m not throwing shade on my colleague, Secretary Schwab, but we have made the determination that it’s not yet ready for use in Minnesota,” Simon said Thursday, adding that Minnesota law doesn’t allow the use of SAVE.
Program central to Trump elections push
SAVE underpins Trump’s efforts to assert more White House power over federal elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are administered by states.
The Department of Justice is suing 29 states and the District of Columbia for access to their unredacted voter rolls, including sensitive personal data on voters, such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.
A Justice Department attorney said in federal court last month that the department has an agreement to share the information with Homeland Security for the purpose of identifying noncitizens.
Trump also signed an executive order last month that limits voting by mail and directs Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age American citizens. The order says the lists will be derived from SAVE data, along with naturalization and Social Security records. At least five lawsuits have been filed against the order, including a challenge brought by Democratic state officials.
The White House is also pressuring Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, Trump’s signature elections proposal. The measure would require voters to provide documents proving their citizenship. Among its provisions is a requirement that states run their voter rolls through the SAVE program.
The House passed the bill in February. The Senate is debating a version of the legislation, which doesn’t appear to have enough votes to overcome a filibuster.
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“Election integrity is not a complicated issue. Only eligible voters should be casting ballots in our elections. One illegal vote is too many,” said Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican and the House Administration Committee chair.
In January, Steil introduced the Make Elections Great Again Act, which contains similar provisions to the SAVE America Act but is more sweeping in its scope. It would impose additional limits on mail-in voting and require states to use SAVE to update voter lists every month.
Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the committee, suggested states already have effective options other than SAVE. He singled out ERIC, or the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization that allows states to compare voter registrations and other data to identify out-of-date registrations, deceased voters and in some cases possible illegal voting.
“I think it would probably be malpractice not to talk about Electronic Registration Information Center,” Morelle said.
Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia belong to ERIC. Some Republican-led states withdrew from the organization several years ago after Trump urged them to leave amid false conspiracy theories, which he helped promote, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Simon said ERIC offers “really good” data that provides tremendous value in helping to keep Minnesota’s voter roll up to date.
“Good data is the coin of the realm here,” he said.
Kansas doesn’t participate in ERIC. Schwab, who is running for governor in Kansas’ Republican primary, said it would be a good tool but that it’s expensive.
ERIC charges new members a one-time $25,000 fee, in addition to annual dues approved by its board of directors, according to the organization’s bylaws. Larger states pay more each year than smaller ones, with annual dues ranging from roughly $37,000 to $117,000, its website says.
“We don’t have the resources to join,” Schwab said.
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