We should follow the law. That’s a bedrock conservative principle. That being said, sometimes the law blocks potentially good things.
In my humble opinion, that describes the order from late last month by federal district court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. According to Judge Sooknanan, the federal government’s efforts to repurpose a data tool to verify the citizenship of voters – the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements [SAVE] program, which was created originally to check for benefits eligibility – violates the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act:
“But decades ago, Congress put protections in place to prevent precisely this type of centralized data bank. And the record in this case shows that the federal agencies that created this database knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”
Again, we should follow the law. And if Judge Sooknanan is right, and this particular use of SAVE does indeed violate those existing federal statutes, then either Congress has to change the law, or the “database” she describes can’t exist.
But it would be a bit of a shame to lose SAVE. The newly expanded tool has allowed, and encouraged, state and local election officials to conduct more efficient citizenship audits. As will soon be detailed here at Declare, at least 16 states have done noncitizen voter audits since 2021, and the vast majority of them used SAVE in some capacity.
Utah’s recent audit is a model. At Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson’s direction, state election officials “began by verifying the driver license and Social Security numbers of all registered voters. We identified 2.9% who lacked either a driver license, a Social Security number, or both.” They then checked those records using SAVE and, if necessary, through a “manual review of registration records.”
The result? Out of the approximately 2.1 million registered voters in Utah, Henderson’s office found 27 confirmed noncitizens, 12 of whom voted in the November 2020 election, and 25 probable noncitizens, 4 of whom voted in the November 2020 election.
Similarly, in Alabama, Secretary of State Wes Allen used SAVE to identify 186 noncitizen registrants, 25 of whom voted in a previous election. Alabama has approximately 3.7 million registered voters.
Is (was?) the SAVE tool perfect? No. By no means. Reporting by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and a review by the Brennan Center for Justice, show material flaws with SAVE, including incorrectly flagging some U.S. citizens as noncitizens. Lieutenant Governor Henderson acknowledged SAVE’s imperfections in the Utah audit: “While we found information obtained from the [Driver License Division] or SAVE to be reliable in confirming whether an individual is a citizen, it was not reliable in indicating an individual was not a citizen, without considering other factors.”
Still, it was a tool where few tools exist, and, if used responsibly, it helped election officials confirm the near non-existence of noncitizen voters. If this use of SAVE is not lawful, then the federal government and state governments should look for lawful alternatives to check for noncitizens on voter rolls. There’s clearly a demand.
After Court Ruling, Reflecting on the Good of SAVE
We should follow the law. That’s a bedrock conservative principle. That being said, sometimes the law blocks potentially good things.
In my humble opinion, that describes the order from late last month by federal district court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. According to Judge Sooknanan, the federal government’s efforts to repurpose a data tool to verify the citizenship of voters – the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements [SAVE] program, which was created originally to check for benefits eligibility – violates the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act:
Again, we should follow the law. And if Judge Sooknanan is right, and this particular use of SAVE does indeed violate those existing federal statutes, then either Congress has to change the law, or the “database” she describes can’t exist.
But it would be a bit of a shame to lose SAVE. The newly expanded tool has allowed, and encouraged, state and local election officials to conduct more efficient citizenship audits. As will soon be detailed here at Declare, at least 16 states have done noncitizen voter audits since 2021, and the vast majority of them used SAVE in some capacity.
Utah’s recent audit is a model. At Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson’s direction, state election officials “began by verifying the driver license and Social Security numbers of all registered voters. We identified 2.9% who lacked either a driver license, a Social Security number, or both.” They then checked those records using SAVE and, if necessary, through a “manual review of registration records.”
The result? Out of the approximately 2.1 million registered voters in Utah, Henderson’s office found 27 confirmed noncitizens, 12 of whom voted in the November 2020 election, and 25 probable noncitizens, 4 of whom voted in the November 2020 election.
Similarly, in Alabama, Secretary of State Wes Allen used SAVE to identify 186 noncitizen registrants, 25 of whom voted in a previous election. Alabama has approximately 3.7 million registered voters.
Is (was?) the SAVE tool perfect? No. By no means. Reporting by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and a review by the Brennan Center for Justice, show material flaws with SAVE, including incorrectly flagging some U.S. citizens as noncitizens. Lieutenant Governor Henderson acknowledged SAVE’s imperfections in the Utah audit: “While we found information obtained from the [Driver License Division] or SAVE to be reliable in confirming whether an individual is a citizen, it was not reliable in indicating an individual was not a citizen, without considering other factors.”
Still, it was a tool where few tools exist, and, if used responsibly, it helped election officials confirm the near non-existence of noncitizen voters. If this use of SAVE is not lawful, then the federal government and state governments should look for lawful alternatives to check for noncitizens on voter rolls. There’s clearly a demand.