Thread

1. 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 &quot;potential noncitizens&quot;. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opb.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;25&#x2F;the-supreme-court-revives-the-controversial-save-data-system&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opb.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;25&#x2F;the-supreme-court-rev...

   In Texas, using this dataset, they were only able to bring forward 117 cases of fraudulent voting.

   1. cosmicgadget · 1790368009 · focus · HN ↗

      As I understand it, one of the main disenfranchisement tactics is to challenge ballots already cast. It&#x27;s potentially very effective because the voter must see that their vote was challenged and then proactively contest it.

      Does the decision make this easier?

      1. jandrewrogers · 1790372800 · focus · HN ↗

         Challenging cast ballots is non-scalable because it requires a lot of formal judicial process separately for each ballot challenged. Realistically a State could go after less than a thousand.

         Even if you know with high certainty that a million ballots are fraudulent it is effectively impossible to challenge them because the judicial capacity required to do so doesn&#x27;t remotely exist. There are adversarial scenarios where someone dumps vast numbers of fraudulent ballots and those ballots cannot be contested.

         State legislatures have historically been empowered to vote in place of the people if the vote becomes infeasible or unreliable. People voting in Federal elections is largely a 20th century invention; the old methods are still available.

         1. cosmicgadget · 1790431451 · focus · HN ↗

            My vague recollection from 2020 was that motivated individuals were challenging hundreds to thousands of ballots in critical precincts (addressing the scalability). Of course the voters were all eligible so they challenged based on the mail ballots being properly signed and dated.

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