DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Supreme Court has given the Trump administration the green light to use a federal citizenship database to verify voters

[social:tweet] Supreme Court has given the Trump administration the green light to use a federal citizenship database to verify voters ahead of the midterm elections.[/social]

The emergency order allows states, for now, to use the Trump administration's revamped version of a Department of Homeland Security program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, in their efforts to verify the eligibility of voters on their rolls. It's a program that has drawn scrutiny for its use of voters' sensitive personal data and its tendency to wrongly flag some eligible voters as noncitizens.

The court's three liberal-leaning justices publicly dissented from the decision.

States' use of the SAVE program is voluntary, limiting the ruling's impact on the midterm elections. Existing law also blocks most states from systematically purging voters from their rolls within 90 days of an election, said David Becker, an election law expert who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research. He said DHS itself has admitted the data is not perfect.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who has refused to participate in the SAVE program, said the ruling will have no effect in her state because it “does not force states to change the way we run our elections.”

The plaintiffs and their lawyers in the case called the ruling “profoundly disappointing” and said it puts “millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database” before the midterms.

On X, James Percival, the general counsel for DHS, responded to a post about the decision with, “Yes, you read that right. We had to file an emergency petition in the Supreme Court just so we could use government data to help states stop noncitizens from illegally voting.”

Ruling pauses a lower court's ban on the tool

The court’s order puts on hold a federal judge’s June ruling that had deemed the Republican administration’s recently revamped version of SAVE illegal. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan had blocked the use of the tool, saying it violated Americans’ privacy rights and could result in voters being wrongly removed from the rolls.

A federal appeals court let her order stand.

But the Supreme Court majority found that a 1996 law explicitly allows DHS to get information about citizenship and immigration from other federal agencies. The federal government also has “an obligation to respond” to states seeking to verify citizenship.

“The order below prevents the Federal Government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task,” the majority wrote in the unsigned order.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The database has long been seen to fall under federal privacy laws, she wrote, and there are real risks that legitimate voter registrations could be mistakenly revoked.

“The harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” Jackson wrote.

The plaintiffs pledged to do “everything in our power” to ensure the district court decision stands.
Trump administration tool has wrongly flagged some legal registrants

The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that DHS help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. The Trump administration last year moved to significantly expand its search abilities. Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters from the rolls.

Some registrants have already been wrongly flagged. In Travis County, Texas, for example, officials said they investigated 97 voters flagged by SAVE as apparent noncitizens and found that at least 10% of them — and likely up to 21% — were U.S. citizens. The county urged the Supreme Court to reject the administration’s appeal, while the state of Texas submitted its own brief defending the database.

In Denton, Texas, north of Dallas, voter Anthony Nels was disappointed that the Supreme Court allowed the continued use “of a system that harms people’s constitutional right to vote.”

Last year, after Texas ran its voter registrations through the SAVE system, Nels, 29, was flagged as a potential noncitizen, even though the South Africa native had become a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago. His local election office temporarily canceled his registration while he obtained a new passport to replace an expired one.

“This just seems like another illegitimate way to affect upcoming and future elections,” he said in a text to The Associated Press.

Stephen Richer, the Republican former top election official in Arizona's largest county, said the Supreme Court's ruling could be a positive step “if used responsibly.”

“That being said, the SAVE program has been shown time after time to be a highly-imperfect tool, so election administrators should only use it as a starting point, not as a definitive indicator of citizenship,” he wrote on social media.
SAVE is one piece of the administration's crusade against noncitizen voting

Even though the use of the SAVE program was blocked for months ahead of Friday's ruling, the administration has said in court filings that it has continued using Social Security Administration data "in certain cases to verify information and help determine whether illegal voting may have occurred."

DHS in August launched its own investigation to find noncitizen voters on state rolls, according to a federal whistleblower statement that said the effort is rushed, filled with errors and potentially violates state laws. DHS has defended that investigation as being conducted “diligently and professionally.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also suggested over the summer that there could be as many as 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote across four states, an unsubstantiated claim that puzzled state election officials who said the numbers dramatically exceeded their own findings.

The effort to create a national voter list is among numerous steps Trump has taken during his second term to try to overhaul the way elections are run. Most of those steps have been blocked by various courts, in part because the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to set election rules, but provides no such power to the president. In mid-September, the Supreme Court rejected a bid from Trump to restrict mail ballot procedures before the midterms.

Trump has remained fixated on the idea that massive numbers of noncitizens are voting in U.S. races, but all evidence says otherwise.

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Georgia’s secretary of state found that 20 of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters were not U.S. citizens. In Ohio, prosecutors secured indictments against nine people for voting as noncitizens over the span of 10 years. The state has some 8 million registered voters. Even with the Trump administration laser-focused on the issue in his second term, DHS said its investigations into potential noncitizens on voter rolls nationwide had led to 160 arrests.

Those numbers are supported by a mountain of research at the national and state level that has found the percentage of noncitizens on voter rolls is a tiny fraction of the nation's registered voters.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/nat...eral-voter-eligibility-database/4148570/

In the end we will find out if this will be used as a tool or a weapon. If it actually lives up to what it claims it will do that's a good thing and a useful tool.

If it ends up targeting legal voters in closely contested red states where they lose and is used in order to refuse confirming their elections results that is using it as a weapon. I can see a scenario where this could tie up election results closely in closely contested red states in the courts so long it will not be settled until trump leaves office. It's easy to claim something and make proving it's false a very difficult task.

Time will tell.

I didn't read all of that.

Bottom line, no matter if there is fraud or not in this day and age it is easily possible. It's not like the days where you registered to vote, showed up at your polling place on voting day, signed the ledger and then voted.

I am all for everybody having an opportunity to vote so the only voting day is out, but maybe we don't need 2-3 weeks of early voting. Maybe we are too loose with mail-in voting?
Anything we do to take away the possibility is a good thing IMO.

Some say there is no proof of widespread fraud. Maybe not but my feeling is why wait until an election has been proven stolen? An alarm system on your home doesn't do you any good for past break-ins.

This issue with this is will it be used to stop voter fraud or will it also target legal voters? Will it be used to stop voter fraud or will it be used as an obstacle to refuse to certify election results?

There is a possibility of either one. But then it would take the arduous of reading all of that to understand how that could work. If it's done and works to accomplish the stated intended task it will be a good thing. We'll see how that goes.

Indeed, we'll see.

I suppose if some eligible voters are erroneously purged, some illegals won' be detected. I suppose nothing in life is perect.

When a person dies, SS is contacted by the funeral homes to stop payments. Nobody contacts the election commissions. That voter is still on the rolls. Without ID anybody can vote under that persons name.

They already know and admitted the system is flawed and will effect legal voters. It's not a question of "if it will" but "how many it will."

People need to decide to stick with one story. Is it to target illegal voters or dead voters?



I fully believe that if you were a legal voter whose vote had been purged from the voter roles you wouldn't be brushing it off as "nothing in life is perfect".

I saw an article that showed nearly 200 legitimate Nevada voters had been struck off or this DHS list had raised them as questionable or as non citizens.... (Better google that so I don't err)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/24/dhs-nevada-voter-non-citizens-error

Here - so 185 identified - all in error. Meanwhile Trump CLAIMS AND AGAIN SPREADS LIES saying 16,000 fraudulent votes in Nevada .... and here we are with nada. Again ...

I guess the Maga Fanboys won't be concerned that the DHS list is more likely going to incorrectly tag (and possibly prevent from being counted?) 1,000s more legitimate votes - while this number is a magnitude more than there is evidence of actual fraudulent votes.

Saw this while searching for the above article:

https://www.facebook.com/BradShowLi...evadas-voter-rolls-he/29269596099298740/

so, if the dems can only find 185 fraud cases... If only legit people vote... why are they fighting so hard against it?

LMAO. You don't understand or are just trolling. The DHS list flagged 185 instances of votes it determined were illegal/fraudulent ... but when investigated every vote was a legal vote by a US citizen. No wonder you hold the opinions you do.

I'm not sure what part of it keeps legal voters votes from being counted that you missed? Why are you trying so hard to promote a system that prevents legal votes from being counted?

The only way to control it is to have every ballot identified by SS number., limited mail-in votes, and limit the election day period.. That way it will be easier to flag ballots that are duplicate or illegally entered....dead people etc, and check ID s at the ballot box.

But then people will beach about right to privacy, which I can halfway get on board with.

I have no faith elections are up and up...and lets face it folks, perception of the populace becomes the reality.

Good little puppet

And that's been their goal all along. No proof, just suspicion. And for you and many like you that's enough.

This bit in particular is what Bannon's goal was when he talked about flooding the zone with excrement. No two ways about it. This is exactly a living and breathing example of what he/they wanted.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it"

I think we can all agree that no system (including voting) will be 100%accurate 100% of the time.

So that lends the question:
Would you rather have a system where an occasional illegal voeter sneaks a vote in or
Would you rather have a system where sometimes a legal registered voter has their vote not counted

Trash ass corrupt scotus.

Can you imagine the fury if we managed to make sure there were no fraudulent votes cast anywhere but at the cost of 1,000s of legal voters losing their vote because it wasn't counted ... and then we find that by some fluke it was a majority of R votes that were not counted?

Or how about the polls open at polling places at 6am and close at 7:30pm. Show up and heaven forbid show an ID on a registration list and if that matches you get to vote. If not, you were either not registered or not illegible to vote. If you will be out of town fill out an absentee ballot. It is a very simple process that worked for many many years. No early voting, no registering same day then voting, no mail in ballot boxes. Stick to the simple rules. Just like football there needs to be rules of the game that must be followed.

Oh, the irony.

You mean stick to your rules you've just invented... because all the states already have their own rules.

Refusing to admit that this administration has made this an art form is a you problem. The writing is on the wall.

Well, I see the hardcore trumpers are still self identifying on DT… didn’t anyone tell them MAGA is dead and their universe is disintegrating around them? Almost $7 a gallon for diesel, promises made promises kept? I thanked each and every traitor, er uh, Trump voter as I paid $6.27 a gallon for heating fuel oil. More than twice what I paid under biden.

\

Is there voter fraud? I do believe there is. But personally, I have no way of knowing how much. So like everyone else, I refer to stats from Legit organizations.

Heritage foundation basically says that after a 30 years or so study, .0000007% voter fraud exists.

MAGA wants that to appear higher so that they can take over voting instead of making it a State Issue.

That is just my opinion.

Thats a fact

I suppose if you allow your perception to be controlled by the persistent ramblings of a buffoon. Is this really where we're at? That someone can just throw crap against the wall with no evidence, repeat it over and over again and then people think we need to do something about it?....................

Trump claims 2020 election 'rigged' at least 107 times in six months as midterms loom

WASHINGTON, May 26 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him at least 107 times in the last six months, keeping the grievance front and center even as he faces new political risks from the war with Iran and looming midterm elections.

Trump devotes near-daily attention to the issue, a Reuters review of his public events, interviews and online posts found, and ‌his comments often come in waves. One Saturday in April, amid a fragile ceasefire with Iran, Trump posted allegations about the 2020 election - when he lost to his predecessor Joe Biden - seven times on his Truth Social account.

He ‌has rehashed his claims during at least six meetings with world leaders, two celebrations of professional sports teams and the White House observances of Hanukkah and Christmas. In unscripted remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, he said "people will soon be prosecuted for what they did."

He reiterated his claims ​of a rigged election at a White House picnic for lawmakers last week and again while speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One.

"If we had Jesus Christ come down and count the votes, I would have won California," Trump said of the reliably Democratic state he lost by 29 percentage points in 2020 and more than 20 percentage points in 2024. "But it's a rigged vote."

Aides and interviewers often shrug off his comments, and critics dismiss them as the musings of a sore loser.

But Trump's relentless focus on 2020 points to a forward-looking strategy aimed at justifying new voting restrictions, reinforcing party loyalty and energizing supporters ahead of November elections that will determine control of Congress, according to two White House officials and two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

By casting the ‌2020 election as illegitimate, he is also laying the groundwork to challenge Republican losses and ⁠undermine Democrats if they win back power, multiple election experts said.

"He's not looking back; this is about the midterms," said Alexandra Chandler, an election expert at the nonpartisan advocacy organization, Protect Democracy. "He's trying to create a fog of disinformation with this. So then if he dials it up further with federal interference, the public will not react as surprised."

In April, despite having kicked off a national redistricting ⁠war months earlier, Trump denounced the results of Virginia's election to redraw U.S. congressional district maps as "rigged," without providing evidence of fraud.

"President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

REPUBLICAN VOTERS SYMPATHETIC TO FALSE CLAIMS

Trump's rhetoric has gained traction among Republican voters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in April found that 63% of Republican voters believe Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, a share ​that ​has remained largely unchanged in recent years.

An even bigger share of Republicans - 82% - said they agreed large numbers of fraudulent ballots are cast by non-citizens ​in U.S. elections.

By comparison, only 9% of Democrats and 21% of independents said they believed Trump ‌lost in 2020 due to wrongdoing, and 18% of Democrats and 38% of independents shared concerns about non-citizens casting fraudulent ballots.

Multiple courts, state officials and prior reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Even so, Trump last year tapped an election-security czar to re-investigate his 2020 loss. Those fresh probes have turned up no new evidence, Reuters reported in April. Administration officials also sought last year to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states as they brainstormed about how the federal government could take control over state-run elections, Reuters reported last week.

Trump's 2020 rhetoric intensified in December after he sought to pardon Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk who was convicted by the state of tampering with voting machines after that election. He repeated the allegations as he pressed congressional Republicans to pass his Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship for voting, and again while stepping up attacks on mail-in voting.

Though the U.S. Senate has failed to advance Trump's nationwide voting changes, numerous states have ‌implemented similar proof-of-citizenship requirements and stricter identification requirements. Trump has also signed executive orders trying to limit mail-in voting, but those actions are currently being ​challenged in court by Democrats.

SOME REPUBLICANS PUSH BACK

In the meantime, Trump has used his 2020 claims to deflect blame for intractable global conflicts and domestic ​policy disputes.

In December, as the war in Ukraine dragged on despite Trump's 2024 campaign pledge to resolve it in a ​day, the U.S. president told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the "rigged" U.S. election allowed for Russia's 2022 invasion. In February, he told families who had lost loved ones in immigration-related crimes that they would be "home ‌with your son, daughter" if the election had not been "rigged."

The 2020 election has also become a ​loyalty test for many of Trump's nominees for key federal roles, ​including judicial picks, who have refused under oath to tell Democratic senators that Biden won. Instead, they say only that Congress certified the election in his favor.

Nevertheless, some Republicans are pushing back.

RightCount, a group of Republicans in battleground states, recently relaunched a campaign to defend the integrity of state-administered elections and counter Trump's efforts to nationalize them.

"All the accusations that have been made have all been refuted, but he doesn't want to listen," said former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a ​supporter of Trump and a member of the group.

After losing his Republican primary in Louisiana last ‌week after Trump refused to back him, U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy took aim at the president's election rigging claims in his concession speech. Cassidy drew the president's wrath by supporting his impeachment after the January 6, ​2021, Capitol attack by Trump supporters trying to stop the 2020 election certification.

"When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn't turn out the way you want it to," Cassidy said. "But you don't pout. You don't whine. ​You don't claim the election was stolen."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-claims-2020-election-rigged-100505391.html

As of now I firmly believe that at least some Republicans who lose will use this false claim to withhold certifying the election results and keep the results of this upcoming election in limbo for quite some time. They will repeat trump's false claims of "It was rigged!" to create chaos. And they will have people like you helping to spread further doubt about our elections accuracy.

Funny how...

2016 dems in the WH - election not rigged
2020 repubes in the WH - election rigged
2024 dems in WH - election not rigged
2026 repubes in WH - election ?rigged