Thread

Supreme Court permits states to use SAVE database for citizenship checks

79 points · 105 comments · speckx

legitster · 1790366819 · focus · HN ↗
My human summarization of the decision:
- 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.
1. malfist · 1790367986 · focus · HN ↗
  > 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
  Except we've seen this before. States purge roles, judge orders them to restore it, oopsie we can't do that before an election, judge permits it to continue until after the election. We've seen this with voter roll purges, gerrymandering, etc. Surprisingly it only seems like one party does this, the party that supposedly supports democracy.
  1. therealpygon · 1790368221 · focus · HN ↗
    Does one of them not supposedly support democracy?
  2. legitster · 1790368695 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    RunSet · 1790370552 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not "pushing policy" if the policy has a popular mandate.
    Compare the respective numbers of Democratic and Republican presidents in your lifetime who attained the office while losing the popular vote.
    pocksuppet · 1790373083 · focus · HN ↗
    Popular mandate is surely 65% as the bare minimum. 51% is not a mandate, it just shows they hate you slightly less than the other guy.

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