States Use Trump Administration Data System To Root Out Noncitizen Voters
00:00Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.Learn more at RWJF.org.Hey, it's Tamara Keith, and it can feel impossible to find your next favorite podcast.And we are very glad you're here listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.But when you want to switch it up, check out NPR's Pod Club newsletter.Sign up and you'll get fresh podcast recommendations every week handpicked by the people that live for this stuff.You can subscribe for free at npr.org slash pod club.
00:42Okay, here's the show.Hi, this is Gronick.Checking in from the backstage and pageant of the masters in Laguna Beach, California.I am about to get into makeup.For tonight's show, this podcast was recorded at 105 p.m. on Monday, September 15th.By the time you hear this, the show will be in cold swing, and I'll be on stage every night this week.Hope you enjoy the show.Well, break a leg.
01:23Seriously, I love the bustling sound.I was thinking busy restaurant when it first started, but backstage makes sense, too.Backstage works.Backstage Works. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And we also have NPR's Jude Jofy Block here with us. Hey, Jude.Hey. Today on the show, millions of voters have had their personal information put into a federaldata system in search for non-citizen voters. What did that search uncover? Jude, let's firstexplain what this database is and how it works. So it's actually a data system that's housed at the Department
01:58of Homeland Security. And it's existed since the 1980s. And what it does is it pings variousdata systems that are all linked together. And it's called save, systematic alien verificationfor entitlements. And state agencies, federal agencies have had access to save so that they cancheck whether foreign-born individuals are eligible for certain benefits. In the past, they woulduse somebody's name and alien identification number to sort of find out if somebody could getwelfare or food stamps or other kinds of benefits. Now, it's been totally revamped. For a few years now,it's been used by a few states to check whether there's any non-citizens on their voter rolls.But the Trump administration has made it a priority to overhaul save and really turn it into
02:48a user-friendly tool for states. They've linked it with Social Security Administration.data so that now actually entire state's voter rolls could be run through save to find out ifanyone is not a citizen. And so for the first time, I can check really citizenship of everyone,not just foreign-born people. I think when people hear about that the federal government isusing this new data system to run voter rolls, it's for a purpose that I think people assumeis already kind of happening that the government is doing these sorts of checks. And they aren'tto some extent. But I think what people need to realize is that,voter records are a fairly new thing, a post-2000 development. And so states are still kind of
03:29trying to figure out how to get all the different data. There's some data at the Social Securityadministration. There's some data at the DMV. There's some data with the Postal Service and tryingto figure out how they can use all these different data sources to kind of clean their voter rolls.And so this development with SAVE is another kind of move towards being able to do that, bothpotentially help find non-citizens, but also to help find dead voters on the roles becauseSocial Security also keeps track of that data. So is SAVE meant to be the answer?or to all these systems that don't necessarily talk to each other?Or supposedly, I mean, that's what the Trump administration is saying, basically,
04:00that they have overhauled this system to be able to quickly be able to find non-citizens in a way that they have them before.But I will note that there are still a lot more questions than answers at this point.We know that more than 33 million voters have been run through it so far.But the Department of Homeland Security and the immigration arm of that department have not made any data really public about whatthose checks have found, with a testing that has been done on it, or notably, which we can getinto a little bit more, the security around this data. Because to be able to run these checks,states have to provide at least the last four digits of a voter social security number,which traditionally has been kind of a red line for many states in terms of providing that
04:41data to outside sources. Okay, so you said 33 million have been run through this already.Which states are using this database? And what have they found? We know several Republicanscontrolled states are beginning to run large swaths of their voter rolls through it. So we knowMissouri, Ohio, Texas. We also found out more information from Louisiana earlier this month.They ran all close to 2.9 million voters through it, almost all of their voters through it.And they found really low numbers of non-citizens. They found 79 people who they suspect to benon-citizens who voted in that state since the 1980s. That's 0.0.0.000.0.03% of their voter role. They found a slightly larger number of people who are registered, who they believe are non-citizens who did not vote. So Louisiana has given these voters a few weeks to respond to see if they can indeed prove that they are citizens. If not, they'll be taken off the voter rolls. And the Secretary of State there has said that they're going to be turning those names over to law enforcement for prosecution. And that includes people who were registered to vote and did not vote, but who were not eligible to be registered. That too is a
05:53crime. And I think as save use gets expanded, we're going to see, you know, more prosecutions offoreign-born people who wound up on the voter rolls. And what's interesting about that is, you know,some people wind up on voter rolls by accident. And so it'll be interesting to see how thatplays out in the courts. So I do want to note, as you said, these are largely Republican states.In fact, all of the states you listed are red states. So is this a partisan thing? Is there a partisanand split miles and how this new old system is being used.Definitely the states that have been most eager to jump in and pilot this new program have beenthe Republican-controlled states. But I will also know we've heard a lot of hesitation from other
06:36Republican states as well. You know, North Carolina was offered a soft launch of this new tooland they politely declined and said that they're still kind of looking to a lot of the openquestions. And then I talked to Mississippi's Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson,who said, A, he's not sure that state law would even allow him to run his voter roll throughthe safe system. But then B, there's still just a lot of questions about the data security.We just want to make sure where's that data going? And at the end of the day, is it stored?What are they going to do with? Who has access? Is it shared? Is it you name it?One key detail here is that the Department of Homeland Security's retention policies mean any data
07:14that is run through the system stays with the federal government for 10 years. And that is a reallyimportant thing when you talk to voting officials because the United States has never had a nationalvoter registration list. But if DHS says they're going to hold on to this data for 10 years and allthe states hypothetically are supposed to run their roles through it, that essentially would givethe Department of Homeland Security a point in time snapshot, which gets really close to potentiallya national voter registration list, which is something that main secretary of state Chenebelos notedto me. And a list like that, a giant data list like that, could put forward.a lot of security risks.
07:51Here's how she put it.Because it's never a question of if a large database is going to be hacked, but when and to whatconsequence?If Mayor Garland were asking for this or President Biden, I have to think that the red stateswould be calling for their heads.And yet now they are, at least some of them, happily putting a lot of information intothis system.Jude also, the Justice Department, recently asked states for all of their voter information.
08:24Are these things we're talking about connected?So that is such a good question.And this is actually a question that several secretaries of states had.And when they were in conversation with DHS, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which oversees this saved data system.When they were talking with them in meetings this summer, we heard that they were asking, you know, what does this have to do with DOJ asking?for voter role information, and how should we be thinking about that in terms of this data,the same data questions that we were just talking about, you know, how long are you guys goingto store this? Are you going to keep this information? And they were told that DOJ is a separate
09:01agency, that DHS isn't interested in their list, but it does seem like there is more of aconnection. Just in recent days, DHS confirmed to other media outlets that there is data sharingwith DOJ going on, and DOJ confirmed to us that the voter role data that they'rethey're getting that they are screening it for ineligible voter entries. And that appears to mean that they are likely running it through save. So this does seem to be connected that DOJ getting voter role information from states, if they do get voter data that has social security information in it, four digits of a social security number and a birthday and a name, they could run it through save potentially. And that's what seems to be going on. And why is Department of Justice doing this? Are they looking for people to prosecute?Yes. President Trump has made it clear, basically since he was inaugurated that one of his priorities was to, you know, root out non-citizen voting. Now, again, just to zoom out, there has still no evidence that non-citizen voting happens at anything but a microscopic level. And Louisiana running their entire voter roll through, say, found 0.003%, which means more than 99.99% of the voter rolls were citizens. That said, President Trump put out an executive order earlier this year that said he wanteddifferent agencies, including DOJ and DHS, to prioritize finding the non-citizen voting that ishappening, that does happen at a microscopic level. And so this seems to be a move towardsfinding those instances. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll have
10:28more in a moment. Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert WoodJohnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longera privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org.And we're back. And we've been talking about a federal data system known as save that some states are using to make sure there are no non-citizens on their voting roles. Miles, the updates to save come at a time when the Trump administration, as you said before, has almost singularly been focused on immigration and trying to find and remove non-citizens from voting roles. How are these politics affecting the way states are approaching thistool. I mean, it's impossible to disconnect these two things, right? I mean, this tool potentiallycould be useful for election officials, but it's also being managed at the very top by the presidentof the United States who oversees the Department of Homeland Security, and President Trump has madefor years made false claims about millions of non-citizens voting in American elections, even though
11:35there has never been evidence to back that up. I think it's important to say, if Save works really,really well. Across the board, Democratic and Republican election officials alike say they would use it,that there basically is this pocket of voters where it's kind of hard to confirm citizenship if theyhaven't done it already at the DMV. And being able to use a voter social security number to beable to do that if it's accurate and doesn't produce bad information and the data security islegit and all these other questions. If all those questions are answered, that the tool actuallywould be helpful. But many election officials are not coming within a 10-foot poll.of this thing at this point, specifically because it's just unclear whether a Department of Homeland Security under President Trump is operating in good faith.
12:19And specifically when you talk about the connection between the Department of Justice and DHS and whether there's honesty with the election officials on how this data is being shared or used, I think there's still just a lot of open questions at this point before many election officials will jump in here.And I think one of the open questions you're highlighting here is it's not clear if this is doing.doing what they want it to do.Right.I mean, I think the early results out of Louisiana, the fact that that number coming outof Louisiana is so small from some of the experts we've talked to, that is a good firstindicator.You know, if Louisiana had run through and said we found 200,000 non-citizens on their
12:58roles, I think that would have been a big red indicator that potentially somethingwas wrong because it doesn't align with the other research on this topic.So it is possible, right, that this thing works well and that these 79 people found inLouisiana are actually non-citizens, but there's just been no public reporting at all onhow this thing was built and how it was tested.And there's a lot of concern in the voting rights community that we're hearing thatthere could be misuse of the tool, that people could be removed if SAVE indicates in theirkind of in a preliminary response that they might be a non-citizen, that they could be taken
13:32off the roles prematurely without due process. And there's a lot of concern around that.I will say that the government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which runs SAVE, you know, does in their materials make clear that state shouldn't do that, that they have to follow certain procedures. But there's questions about, you know, well, who's enforcing that? And what does that look like? And could some eligible voters be removed because of using this tool? So there's still a lot of questions and concerns out there, but not a lot of data yet about to know how it's being used. And I'll also note that that's not like a hypothetical concern, right, Jude? I mean, we saw it just last year.where some election officials in some states basically took data related to this issue and deleted voters ahead of the election and then basically were ordered by courts to put them back on.So we have seen some election officials kind of chomping at the bit to be deleting voters in the non-citizen realm before that data is 100%.So it's not just a hypothetical issue coming from advocates.In recent years, several states have passed laws that require people to provide proof of citizenship, things like a birth certificate.or a passport. Does the safe system replace that or does it reduce the need for that sort ofpaperwork? Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. I mean, we've also seen, of course,
14:49in Trump's executive order trying to mandate proof of citizenship in the federal voter registrationform as well, which has been blocked for now by courts. But yes, I mean, this is a really interestingpoint that voting rights advocates worry that such requirements put a big burden.on voters who don't have their birth certificate next to them when they register to vote,that this could really create huge obstacles to voters. And we know that there's millions of peoplewho are eligible voters who don't have those documents at the ready. And so we have talkedto election officials who do applaud this idea as a much less intrusive way for them to beable to have clean voter rolls without putting a big burden on voters, that it's just sort
15:33of something that happens behind the scenes with data matching. And it doesn't put thatburden on the voter. So it'll be interesting to see how this expanded use of SAVE changes thispolicy discussion about whether we need these proof of citizenship requirements. Miles, I want to askyou one last thing, which is, you know, when I first heard your reporting on this, I confused SAVE witha different database that states have been using called Eric. Not that long ago, you were on thepod talking about Republican states pulling out of that database. Can you explain the differentand like who's using what at this point?It's honestly a very valid question because I do feel like I come on here every six months
16:13and bring you like a new voting acronym that you have to memorize and realize how it works.But I think the two things in many ways are kind of similar and that states are just trying to findways to combine all of this data into something that's useful for cleaning up their rolesbecause voters die and voters move every single day.So it's really hard to keep those lists up to date.So basically Eric, which is the system we reported on a couple years ago a lot,it was this partnership of states where states got together and said, we're going to share our roles together to be able to know when voters move, potentially be able to catch the voters that vote in two different places to be able to prosecute those people, and then also be able to get access to like really expensive federal data a little bit cheaper because you're all kind of sharing those costs.And so what we saw after in 2023 was a number of Republican states pull out of Eric because there was a lot of misinformation that started on a far right website that then kind of got into the mainstream.
17:04But what's really interesting in comparing these two data systems is that many of the Republican states that pulled out of Eric are many of the states that are now eagerly kind of jumping into using the save system within DHS and sending all of their data to the federal government when there are all of these outstanding questions.And one of the big things with Eric was data security, even though that system took multiple years to develop and they put a lot of time and energy into the data security aspect of it.it's not really clear that that same care has been taken in developing the save database.At least none of those protocols have been made public to us.And yet many of these Republican states are kind of chomping at the bit, specifically because it's kind of led by President Trump and it aligns politically with the leaders of those states.Yeah.I mean, this is a fascinating situation where you end up with sort of disparate systems based on party alliances.I mean, partisans run our voting systems.
17:57That is just kind of a truth in American elections.It's just kind of how it works.All right, well, we're going to leave it there for today. Jude, thanks for joining us.Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
18:27RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is.is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at our wjf.org.
There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click any sentence in the transcript to leave one.