Federal Citizenship Data Tool Cannot Be Used to Screen Voters, Judge Rules

Key Points:

• A federal judge barred the Trump administration from allowing states to use a national immigration database to screen voter rolls, ruling that this repurposing violated at least three laws.
• Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop permitting states to query the database, which includes Social Security records, for voter eligibility checks.
• The ruling criticized the executive order for hastily implementing a flawed system that risks wrongly flagging eligible voters and potentially purging them before elections.
• The judge emphasized that using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system for voting purposes unlawfully misused sensitive personal data and violated privacy protections intended by Congress.
• The decision highlighted concerns over the creation of a centralized federal database containing private citizen information without proper legal safeguards, threatening voting rights and privacy.