The Supreme Court revives the controversial SAVE data system : NPR

Key Points:

• The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily reinstated the Department of Homeland Security's revamped Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, allowing it to check the citizenship status of millions of Americans on state voter rolls, despite concerns about erroneous flagging of eligible voters as noncitizens.
• The Trump administration has aggressively used the expanded SAVE system, which now links Social Security records and enables bulk queries, to identify and remove noncitizens from voter rolls ahead of the midterm elections, though federal law restricts systematic voter removals close to elections.
• The court's majority ruled that the federal government can use SAVE for individualized inquiries during the 90-day pre-election period, while dissenting justices warned of potential harms to recently naturalized citizens who might be wrongfully challenged or removed.
• Critics, including the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argue that the expanded SAVE violates privacy laws, lacks congressional authorization, and has an unknown error rate that risks disenfranchising lawful voters.
• Past use of SAVE in states like Texas led to thousands of voters being flagged as potential noncitizens and removed from rolls if they failed to prove citizenship, highlighting concerns about the system's reliability and impact on voting rights.