Supreme Court permits states to use SAVE database for citizenship checks
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Supreme Court permits states to use SAVE database for citizenship checks
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
legitster · · focus · HN ↗
- SAVE was a database established in 1986 to determine if immigrants were eligible for federal benefits
- Starting in 2005, some states used it to check their voter registrations
- By executive order, the administration merged it with the SSN database to make bulk searches easier
- Organizations sued, and a lower court said the administration had to hold off on rolling out the changes while the lawsuit was pending. The Supreme Court overruled the stay, saying the lawsuit had not proved enough merit to stop the policy while the lawsuits proceed.
- It is still up to states whether they use SAVE or not. If someone shows up in the SAVE database, the state may ask them to provide proof of citizenship.
The concern here from the dissent is that states are going to purge their voter registrations while awaiting the ruling. But realistically, the states interested in doing this don't have enough time before midterms to do this - as they would have to then process all of the proof-of-citizenship documentation or open themselves up to mass lawsuits.
Update: Per NPR, the SAVE database covers 65 million voters in 26 states, of which 28,635 have been flagged as "potential noncitizens". <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/25/the-supreme-court-revives-the-controversial-save-data-system/" rel="nofollow">https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/25/the-supreme-court-rev...
In Texas, using this dataset, they were only able to bring forward 117 cases of fraudulent voting.
pstuart · · focus · HN ↗
Voter fraud is incredibly rare, but I have a gut feeling that electoral fraud has happened and will continue to get worse, courtesy of the same administration.
It must be remembered that every accusation from them is a confession.
For the acolytes that down vote me, at least make your case on where and why I am wrong. My comment is as a citizen, not as a partisan.
skinfaxi · · focus · HN ↗
pstuart · · focus · HN ↗
skinfaxi · · focus · HN ↗
AnimalMuppet · · focus · HN ↗
See, there are always two kinds of errors. In the case of voting, one kind is where you let someone vote who shouldn't, and the other is where you don't let someone vote who should. And when you try to decrease one, you increase the other, because you don't have a perfect system.
So, how much suppression of legitimate voters should we accept in order to decrease voter fraud? I think the answer should be "no more voters should be suppressed than there are fraudulent votes cast, and preferably fewer".
Well, how many fraudulent votes are cast? There is little evidence that it's a large problem. In the absence of such evidence, I do not thing that there should be large changes to try to eliminate the fraudulent votes that exist, because they are likely to cause more problems the other direction.
Note well: I do not approve of fraudulent votes. But even more I disapprove of creating a large problem to fix a small one.
pstuart · · focus · HN ↗
But to the point of even 400 non-eligible voters participating, that is 400 too much.
If find the framing of your question bordering on disingenuous but I'll charitably assume that it is willfully ignorant.
We should have zero voter fraud. We should have zero electoral fraud.
Voter fraud itself is incredibly rare in US elections:
<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud" rel="nofollow">https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/vote-s...
But you position yourself as expecting fair elections, and if you really do, you would understand that fair comprises not just keeping ineligible voters from doing so, but also allowing eligible voters to do so.
There's been an incredible amount of fuckery by the GOP to disenfranchise citizens of their rights to vote. But do you care about that?
Do you care that Trump is working to install loyalists into positions of election officials who are loyal to him, rather than the historical position of neutral officials who honor the democratic process?
<a href="https://nlihc.org/resource/history-voter-suppression" rel="nofollow">https://nlihc.org/resource/history-voter-suppression
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...
<a href="https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/historyvotersuppression/websitesandresources" rel="nofollow">https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/historyvotersuppression/web...
There's plenty more where that came from, but I doubt you'll look at any of that because that isn't likely a concern of you.
So I ask you: is your concern about "your team" not winning or about free and fair elections. I'm pretty sure what that answer is but would welcome your response.