Trump administration asks Supreme Court to lift block on controversial SAVE database for state voter roll reviews
The Trump administration requested the Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in a lawsuit and permit the use of a controversial data system to review state voter rolls as the midterm elections approach.
In June, a federal judge determined that the Trump administration acted unlawfully by establishing a centralized database, referred to as the "Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements," or SAVE, which contains private information of Americans. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan stated that some states used the database to erroneously remove U.S. citizens from their voter rolls.
The system was part of President Trump’s comprehensive efforts to find evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in federal elections, which has largely been disproven and shown to be very rare.
Sooknanan stated in her ruling that the "federal government has knowingly infringed on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote," by attempting to implement the SAVE system. Sooknanan determined that the administration breached three different federal laws by attempting to implement the SAVE system.
Over the weekend, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s request to suspend the district court’s block on the SAVE database.
In a new filing Tuesday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer labeled Sooknanan’s ruling as "indefensible" and claimed it "threatens the integrity of upcoming elections." He also stated that the judge exceeded her authority and argued that the voting rights groups who initiated the lawsuit did not have the proper legal standing to sue. Sauer asked the justices to lift Sooknanan’s stay and permit the use of the SAVE system.
"SAVE does not disqualify any voter; instead, it merely informs the States whether the federal government can verify citizenship," Sauer wrote. "Thus, any voter injury is caused by the States, not by the federal government, and would not be corrected by the relief the court imposed against the federal government."
The new request follows the Trump administration’s previous request to the Supreme Court to reinstate new Postal Service rules for mail voting in the upcoming midterms.
The SAVE database was developed by several federal agencies in response to an executive order signed by Mr. Trump the previous year that aimed to impose a new proof-of-citizenship requirement for those registering to vote. The order instructed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to create a database that would effectively enable state and local officials to verify the citizenship or immigration status of individuals attempting to register to vote.
The executive order faced several legal challenges, and key provisions have been blocked.
Nonetheless, the directive initiated the overhaul of the existing SAVE system. It was adjusted to include records of natural-born citizens; to access records from the SSA, including Social Security numbers; and to authorize bulk searches of records by entities that utilize the database.
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