The US Supreme Court granted a request from the Trump administration on Friday, allowing the use of a federal database to verify voter rolls and identify potential non-citizens. The decision, issued in an unsigned opinion joined by a majority of the nine justices, provides a legal victory for President Donald Trump ahead of the November mid-term elections.
The ruling lifts a lower court order that had previously blocked the Department of Homeland Security from using its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to verify the citizenship of individuals on voter rolls. SAVE is a program typically used to identify citizenship status to determine eligibility for government benefits. The Supreme Court stated that the federal government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify voter citizenship, noting that the previous injunction prevented the government from using the program it deemed best suited for the task.
The three liberal justices on the conservative-dominated court dissented from the decision. In its June ruling against the administration, the lower court had argued that the federal government had "knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote." The lower court also noted that states had partnered with the federal government to access the database, resulting in the removal of United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.
Attorney General Todd Blanche welcomed the Supreme Court ruling as a "huge victory for election integrity," stating it will "allow states to clear the voter rolls of illegal voters."
Despite the legal win, election experts suggest the ruling is unlikely to have a significant impact on the upcoming November elections. This is largely because most US states prohibit the purging of voters within 90 days of an election. Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, noted in a blog post that both the majority and dissent agree the case is likely to have limited impact on the midterms.
Hasen further observed that, compared to a recent Supreme Court decision earlier this month that blocked a Trump plan to restrict mail-in ballots, the SAVE ruling is "not very important substantively." President Trump had reacted strongly to the earlier mail-in voting decision, describing it as "horrible" and "highly political" in a Truth Social post. The administration has long claimed that non-citizens vote in US elections and that mail-in ballots are vulnerable to fraud.
<small>Source: Vanguard News — read the original story there.</small>
