Jennifer Kady Stanton

By Jennifer Kady Stanton

If millions of voters are screened instead of investigating suspected individual voters, as the SAVE system was originally intended, scores of provisional ballots could go uncounted simply because eligible voters don’t have enough time to prove their citizenship.

The vast majority of Americans- Independents, Democrats, and Republicans only want citizens voting in our elections.  A Brennan Center study of 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions during the 2016 election found only 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting referred for investigation or prosecution, approximately 0.0001% of votes cast.

SAVE, not to be confused with the SAVE Act, stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements and was established in 1986 to verify the citizenship status of non-citizens applying for benefits and licenses; DHS largely maintained it. However, in March 2025, Trump signed an executive order that greatly expanded SAVE to check the citizenship status of people registering to vote or who were already registered. 10 states have used it since 2025, but it has demonstrated a shockingly high error rate. The SCOTUS ruling allows the modified SAVE to link to the SSA and lets the Trump administration continue using SAVE for bulk searches to screen voters for citizenship while litigation continues.

If the SAVE system flags a potential voter, election officials will contact them and ask for information to verify citizenship. We do not have to wonder what might happen. Texas ran 18 million voters through the SAVE system and flagged 2,724 voters who needed additional verification. This represented 0.0151% of records needing further investigation. Officials contacted those voters and removed from the rolls those who did not respond. Later, Texas determined that many of the 2,724 voters were citizens. Only 117 of the original 18 million were sent for investigation for possible non-citizen voting, a rate of about 0.00065%.

Several issues may cause SAVE to flag a voter during a mass search. For example, outdated records may flag naturalized citizens as non-citizens. Federal law also requires completing programs designed to remove ineligible voters at least 90 days before an election. We are now well within this 90-Day Quiet Period. States can still choose to participate in the SAVE system, but they may be advised to look to Texas as an example of issues that may occur.

The Trump administration has argued that the 90-day Quiet Period before an election does not protect suspected non-citizens, even though many of those voters will ultimately be deemed legal citizens. The Supreme Court did not rule on that distinction. To complicate matters, if SAVE flags a voter and citizenship is still not determined by election day, either because there wasn’t enough time before the election or because the person could not be contacted, they would potentially be eligible to cast a provisional ballot. However, election officials would likely not count that ballot immediately and would count it only if the voter is ultimately determined to be a citizen. States vary in their deadlines for verifying provisional ballots. Depending on state law, officials may not verify an eligible voter’s citizenship before the deadline, and the ballot could go uncounted.

The government has combined several agencies, such as the SSA, designed for other purposes, to screen millions of voters for citizenship. Historically, non-citizen voters have never come close to altering an election. However, SAVE screenings could create chaos, uncertainty, and heightened risk for legitimate voters who may be flagged by a system never designed to verify citizenship. SAVE may also flag legitimate citizen voters who don’t have enough time to prove their citizenship, causing their vote to be discarded.

Ultimately, eligible voters may not have their voices heard, simply because their citizenship status could not be verified in time.