Texas announced a pilot program to verify registered voters’ citizenship status in early June through an online system traditionally used to confirm public benefits eligibility, raising privacy concerns from voting rights advocates.
Agencies seeking access to the tool, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, must enter into an agreement with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Texas Secretary of State’s office, which manages state elections, used SAVE to verify the citizenship status of at least 1,657 voter records in May, according to records obtained by American Oversight, a non-partisan organization advocating for government transparency.
State efforts to identify non-citizen voters come after a March executive order directed the U.S. Secretary of State to ensure state and local election officials verified the citizenship of those registering or registered to vote.
What is SAVE and how has Texas used the system?
According to USCIS, the U.S. Congress originally intended for the SAVE system to help states verify the citizenship of applicants for benefits such as driver’s licenses, social security cards or programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which are administered by states. Texas began using SAVE as early as 1984, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and USCIS announced an overhaul of SAVE in April to “ensure a single, reliable source for verifying non-citizen status nationwide,” USCIS spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in an email. The overhaul included eliminating fees for state agencies using the service, and integrating criminal records, immigration timelines and addresses.
Carl Blair, senior election protection attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the Texas Secretary of State’s office can now upload voter registration records to SAVE in bulk, and the system compares the information to multiple different federal records.
“We’re transmitting personally identifiable information: people’s full names, their social security numbers,” Blair said. “It’s going through at least three different steps, three different groups who have access to that information.”
What are the implications for data privacy and security?
The major data privacy concerns associated with SAVE include few clear guidelines on how to secure the information and whether the federal government can save the data, Blair said. Changes to the search functions in SAVE, including the ability for state agencies to use a voter registrant’s social security number, were not part of the system’s original functions, he said.
“The public has so far been shut out of any real, genuine notice about what changes have been made to this program,” Blair said.
Each Texas county is responsible for maintaining its respective voter registration lists. Blair said the role of local county officials, including election administrators, county clerks or voter registrars, adds an extra layer of complexity to existing privacy concerns because it is unclear who can access what data.
The Travis County Voter Registrar could not comment on the dependability of SAVE because only the state has access to the program, but said the registrar takes the responsibility of removing noncitizen voters from the voting rolls very seriously.
“Noncitizen voting is a rare occurrence,” a Travis County Voter Registrar spokesperson wrote in an email. “Just last year, our Texas Secretary of State reaffirmed on their website that ‘Texas leads the way against non-citizen voting.’”
