IN BRIEF: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been quietly working to expand an identification program that would pose massive risks to voter protection nationwide.
The proposal from DHS would affect the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program. The goal is to turn this program, currently used for very specific identification purposes, into a broad identity-matching system that draws on data from countless sources. The SAVE Program’s original purpose was strictly to verify the immigration statuses of people applying for government benefits. This departure from that original purpose flies in the face of the privacy protections that Congress has long demanded the federal government uphold.
DHS has been expanding the program with little to no public accountability to date, using SAVE to obtain data from the Social Security Administration, the Department of State, and even state driver’s licensing agencies. Essentially, the department is attempting to create a new and unnecessary form of intrusive identity verification that would severely threaten voter protections, outright defying the clear limits on federal data use and interagency data consolidation established by the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Administrative Procedure Act. DHS’ actions also raise serious concerns under the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
WHY IT MATTERS: Because of this expansion, government officials could potentially use inaccurate, arbitrary, and intrusive data to justify voter roll purges.
The SAVE program’s expansion would cross-reference incomplete, outdated, and inconsistent underlying citizenship data with voting records. This would inevitably lead to inaccurate results, wrongful voter removals, and increased illicit intrusions into people’s private data.
And it’s no secret that voter purges, investigations, and citizenship challenges have disproportionately impacted Black voters throughout our country’s history. The use of records verification, particularly when relying on an incomplete and often inaccurate system, poses a significant opportunity for bad actors to engage in Black voter suppression.
Black Americans are particularly vulnerable to being misidentified by the current SAVE system. Many older Black voters lack complete birth records due to segregated or underfunded hospitals that lacked consistent documentation. Moreover, Black voters have a higher likelihood of having misspelled or otherwise inaccurately recorded names in government systems. And Black naturalized citizens also face a heightened risk of SAVE inaccurately classifying them as noncitizens as a result of decades of flawed voter purge programs that have historically targeted Black communities.
Furthermore, a large proportion of those most likely to be misidentified by SAVE already face increased hurdles to voting due to socioeconomic barriers and ongoing discriminatory practices in election administration. This includes Black people in the South, naturalized citizens, and voters living in historically under-documented communities.
The currently designed expansion of the program and its use to police voting records would lead to the illegal disenfranchisement of Black voters, full stop. Indeed, SAVE’s expansion mirrors a pattern historically rooted in Jim Crow–era disenfranchisement, reflecting many of the same mechanisms, impacts, and populations affected.
Various states are already attempting to purge voters from their rolls based on initial SAVE results, despite DHS having no congressional authorization to expand the program. These practices deliberately defy federal SAVE guidance as well, which specifically prohibits agencies from treating initial SAVE results as fact and instead requires additional verification of the results.
LDF AT WORK: This week, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) sent a letter to DHS strongly condemning the program’s expansion and demanding public accountability, full compliance with federal procedural requirements, and a halt to using the program to infringe on the fundamental right to vote.
In the face of serious risks to voter rights, privacy, due process, and civil liberties, LDF has stood firmly for 85 years against any program that may wrongfully cancel the registrations of eligible voters or places Black voters and naturalized citizens at particular risk of disenfranchisement.
Learn more about LDF’s work to protect voting rights and other tactics designed to infringe upon our democracy here.
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