A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s use of a revamped immigration database to identify noncitizens who have registered to vote across the country. The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the federal government’s actions threatened Americans’ privacy and voting rights.
Impact on Ongoing Investigations
The ruling doesn’t put a halt to any of the investigations that have been carried out in more than two dozen states that used the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, better known as SAVE, over the past year to identify potential noncitizens on their voter rolls. In Texas, for example, more than 2,700 people were flagged as potential noncitizens using the SAVE database.
Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said most Texas counties had already completed their investigations. County officials sent out letters to those on the list and gave people 30 days to provide proof they were eligible to vote. McGinn estimated that 75% to 80% of those in smaller counties have already been taken off the lists because they did not respond within the 30 days.
Reaction from Election Officials
Dan Vicuña, the senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause, said the judge’s ruling would at least give people who had been improperly removed from voter registration lists because of states’ use of SAVE a chance to challenge the decisions. Other states using SAVE have flagged much smaller numbers of potential noncitizens registered.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger said in a statement that he was disappointed with the judge’s ruling and said he was still proceeding with a new check of its voter rolls to ensure no noncitizens were on the lists. A top election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County recently referred more than 200 cases of potential noncitizen voters to the state and local prosecutors for potential prosecution.
Original reporting: Texas Tribune (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
