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. pstuart · 1790367771 · focus · HN ↗
  Every "concern" raised by the Trump administration is cover for voter disenfranchisement. Period.
  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.
  1. skinfaxi · 1790369643 · focus · HN ↗
    Didn't it recently come to light of NJ registering thousands of non-citizens to vote?
    pstuart · 1790370060 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2026/08/trump-overstates-magnitude-of-noncitizen-voting-in-new-jersey/" rel="nofollow">https://www.factcheck.org/2026/08/trump-overstates-magnitude...
    skinfaxi · 1790390886 · focus · HN ↗
    So what's the allowed level of voter fraud we should accept? And the fact check is about votes not registered voters. Funny how it focuses on national elections when local elections can be swayed by handfuls of votes.
    AnimalMuppet · 1790391796 · focus · HN ↗
    What level of suppression of legitimate voters are we willing to accept in order to avoid voter fraud?
    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.

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