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 midterm elections approach, Republican and Democratic election officials are at odds over a powerful federal computer program that is at the heart of President Donald Trump’s efforts to unmask noncitizen voters and create lists of voting-age Americans.
A hearing in the U.S. House Administration Committee on Thursday underscored the partisan divide over the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE program. The online tool can verify U.S. citizenship by comparing names against a variety of government databases.
republican have accepted SAVE – Systematic alien screening for claims – as an effective modern method for identifying potential non-citizen voters. But Democrats have rejected it because they fear Trump is building a national voter database and because they fear the program will falsely label U.S. citizens.
Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, expressed opposing views on SAVE on Thursday hearing. The deletion of registered non-citizens has been an ongoing focus of the Trump administration, even though studies show that non-citizens vote extremely rarely.
Kansas rolled out its voter rolls through SAVE last year after the Trump administration transformed the program, originally intended to check whether individual noncitizens are eligible for federal benefits, into a citizenship verification tool and made it free for states. Schwab said SAVE led Kansas to identify more than 5,500 registered voters who died outside the state.
“SAVE is one of the most important tools states have to verify voter information,” Schwab told the committee.
However, Simon has previously raised concerns about the program. He signed a letter with 11 other Democratic secretaries of state on December 1 saying that SAVE would likely weaken rather than strengthen government efforts to ensure free, fair and secure elections. The program will likely misidentify eligible voters and limit voter turnout, they wrote.
“I’m not throwing shade at my colleague, Secretary Schwab, but we have concluded that it is not yet ready for use in Minnesota,” Simon said Thursday, adding that Minnesota law does not allow SAVE to be deployed.
program that is central to Trump’s campaign
SAVE underpins Trump’s efforts to give the White House more power over federal elections, which are administered by states under the U.S. Constitution.
The Justice Department is Lawsuit against 29 states and the District of Columbia for access to their unredacted voter rolls, including sensitive personal information about voters such as driver’s licenses and incomplete Social Security numbers.
A Justice Department lawyer said in federal court last month that the department had an agreement to share the information with Homeland Security to identify noncitizens.
Trump too signed an executive order last month, restricting mail-in voting and directing Homeland Security to compile lists of eligible American citizens to vote. The order says the lists are derived from SAVE data as well as 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 urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, Trump’s main election proposal. The measure would require voters to provide documents proving their citizenship. Among its provisions is a requirement that states maintain their voter rolls through the SAVE program.
The House of Representatives passed the bill in February. The Senate is debating a version of the bill that does not appear to have enough votes to overcome a filibuster.
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“Election integrity is not a complicated issue. Only eligible voters should vote in our elections. One illegal vote is too many,” said Rep. Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Administration Committee.
Steil presented this in January Make elections great againwhich contains similar provisions to the SAVE America Act but is broader in scope. It would impose additional restrictions on absentee voting and require states to employ SAVE to update voter rolls each month.
Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the committee, suggested that states already have effective options other than SAVE. He pointed to ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center), a nonprofit that allows states to compare voter registrations and other data to identify antiquated registrations, deceased voters and, in some cases, potentially illegal voting.
“I think it would probably be misconduct not to talk about the Electronic Registration Information Center,” Morelle said.
ERIC includes 25 states and the District of Columbia. Some Republican-led states withdrew from the organization several years ago after Trump urged them to leave over false conspiracy theories he helped promote that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Simon said ERIC provides “really good” data that has tremendous value in keeping Minnesota’s voter rolls updated.
“Good data is the be-all and end-all here,” he said.
Kansas does not participate in ERIC. Schwab, who is running for governor in the Republican primary in Kansas, said it’s a good tool, but it’s steep.
ERIC charges modern members a one-time fee of $25,000 in addition to annual dues approved by the board, ERIC said Charter of the organization. Larger states pay more each year than smaller ones, with annual contributions ranging from about $37,000 to $117,000, the website says.
“We don’t have the resources to join,” Schwab said.
