What the Supreme Court’s Midterm Election Voter Citizenship Database Ruling Means

The Supreme Court revived a controversial voter citizenship database less than two months before the midterm elections. In that ruling, the court sided with the Trump administration, which seeks to use the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database to review state voter rolls for potential noncitizens. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Votebeat’s Jessica Huseman.

Amna Nawaz:

The Supreme Court today revived a controversial voter citizenship database, just two months before the midterm elections.

Geoff Bennett:

In that ruling, the court sided with the Trump administration considering using the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database to review state voter rolls for potential noncitizens.

We’re joined now by Votebeat editor Jessica Huseman, who covered this issue.

Jessica, it’s always a pleasure talking with you.

So tell us exactly what the Supreme Court did today. What can the Trump administration and states do today that they couldn’t do yesterday?

Jessica Huseman, editorial director, Votebeat:

This question is very difficult to answer due to the timing of the November elections.

So the Supreme Court stayed a June lower court ruling that blocked 2025 changes to the SAVE database that allowed states to use them to mass check the citizenship status of people on their voter rolls. States can therefore begin to do so.

The problem for the Trump administration is that we are in a 90-day period required by the NVRA, which is a federal election law, which prevents people from being removed from the rolls before a federal election. So while this is really going to be a sea change for election administrators going forward, I don’t think voters will see any real effect for this election at this time, given this parameter.

Geoff Bennett:

And this database, this SAVE database, was not originally designed to monitor voter rolls. How has the Trump administration transformed it? And why has it become a central element of his electoral strategy?

Jessica Huseman:

Exactly, absolutely. I think people really don’t know what the SAVE database is, what’s in it, why it was created.

And in reality, this is a database to track non-citizens or to have sort of an accounting of non-citizens in the country that DHS knows about, right? And that’s a pretty clear distinction between what people think is a magical database that every non-citizen that’s in the country lives in, right?

This is not the list that exists. And even the list they use has significant problems. We’re seeing some pretty big lag issues. We’ve seen it many times in Texas, for example. So it’s not a perfect database. And Trump allowed states to use that to batch search people registered to vote.

Previously, states could only search one person at a time. They can now use it much more widely. And the database is linked to several other databases maintained by DHS. So, in theory, it’s a much more powerful tool than before. The problem is that it still returns a lot of errors.

Geoff Bennett:

Well, on that point, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned in her dissent that states could cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens. So how can an eligible voter be wrongly flagged by this system? And has this actually happened before?

Jessica Huseman:

It happened and it happened frequently. We talked about it in Texas. So I think people assume that government databases all talk to each other and automatically track you through your citizenship process. That’s not the case, is it?

This is a database that is largely managed by human beings who must enter information into the database on time, when asked, and as you expect them to. And history shows us that this doesn’t happen often.

I think it’s important for people to know that this isn’t the final check, right? If your county chooses to use this process, if your state chooses to use this process, your county’s election administrator remains the one ultimately responsible. for removing you from the reels.

And Votebeat knows from our reporting that these county clerks tend to be much more careful with these matches than the federal government or even many state governments. And they do these second-tier checks to make sure that people who are flagged are not unnecessarily deported in most cases.

Geoff Bennett:

Jessica Huseman, you clarify what is confusing. Thank you for helping us make sense of it all. We appreciate it.

Jessica Huseman:

Thank you so much.

Geoff Bennett:

And moments ago, the Supreme Court issued another ruling striking down Trump-backed congressional maps in Missouri, just weeks before the election. The order blocks a map that could have added another Republican district.