In late August, the Department of Homeland Security gave the North Carolina State Board of Elections six days to decide whether to take an invitation-only, “exciting opportunity” to root out noncitizens from its voter roll.
If the elections board took the deal, it would hand over some or all of its voter roll to the federal agency, including registered voters’ names, birthdays and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. In exchange, the agency would check the voter roll against databases maintained by DHS, the Department of Justice and the Social Security Administration to determine whether any noncitizens were illegally on the voter rolls.
The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program was originally designed to verify immigration status for those seeking government benefits, but now has a broader purview. North Carolina already uses the program on a case-by-case basis to check that those who claim a noncitizenship jury excuse don’t appear on the voter roll.
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DHS’ offer would allow the state to check immigration statuses in bulk, using the last four of registered voters’ Socials.
Last Wednesday, the elections board passed on the offer — for now — after discussing the legal issues in a closed session.
“We are doing due diligence to ensure that if we provide the voter rolls to the federal government, that it is safeguarded, protected and only used and seen by the people working on that project,” State Board spokesperson Pat Gannon told reporters.
In recent years, a cohort of conservative politicians led by President Donald Trump have claimed lax list maintenance efforts by state election boards have left the door open for election fraud by noncitizens.
Since May, the Department of Justice has requested voter rolls in 21 states, including Nevada, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
And now, under Trump’s directive, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is offering about two-dozen states who already use SAVE the option to run their entire voter rolls through the program for free.
While all evidence points to an insignificant number of noncitizens actually voting — a database of the conservative Heritage Foundation lists 38 instances of noncitizens registering to vote or voting in North Carolina since 1982, for example — removing any possibility of fraud is politically popular.
Still, some are concerned that the SAVE program isn’t as reliable as it appears, and could promote the false idea that there is a deluge of noncitizens attempting to vote in elections.
Fatal flaws in program seeking noncitizens?
This isn’t North Carolina’s first rodeo. It’s used SAVE before, as part of its audit into the 2016 general election.
The audit, conducted by the then-Republican State Board of Elections, found 41 cases of noncitizens with some form of legal status, like a green card, casting ballots in North Carolina. But 34 additional voters who later proved their citizenship were also flagged as suspected noncitizens by the SAVE program.
A SAVE non-match alone was “not a reliable indicator that a person is not a U.S. citizen,” the report stated.
The system was unlikely to include birthright citizens who haven’t applied for a Certificate of Citizenship, which generally costs $1,385. It also tended to lag behind and miss recently naturalized citizens, the audit found.
People who have changed their names, like married women or transgender people, may have a higher chance of appearing as a non-match in the system as well, Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper said.
However, registered voters cannot be removed from the rolls solely because of a SAVE non-match, according to a U.S. CIS factsheet.
Back in 2016, the state elections board contacted voters who didn’t match in the system to determine their citizenship status through mailings and interviews.
So, what’s the harm?
Common Cause policy director Ann Webb said the transfer of voter roll data in itself creates risk. It’s also unclear exactly who would or wouldn’t be able to gain access to the data.
The United States has a decentralized voter registration system; there’s no national database. While this might cause some interstate coordination issues, it also makes election data harder to hack, Cooper said.
As a result, centralizing voter data could make it easier to steal an election, Cooper said.
Creating extra hoops for citizens to jump through to maintain their right to vote may also attract litigation if the board were to sign on to the agreement. It’s unclear what protections someone suspected of being a noncitizen registered voter is owed under federal law, though, said Rachel Orey, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center Elections Project.
U.S. CIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser did not say who exactly would have access to voter roll data if North Carolina participated in the program, but emphasized that SAVE has undergone an overhaul since 2016.
“This overhaul eliminates fees for database searches, improves accuracy, streamlines mass status checks, and integrates additional data sources,” Tragesser said in a statement.
The overhaul is a big deal, Orey said. The system is no longer cost-prohibitive, and election officials can use the last four digits of registered voters’ Social Security numbers to check for matches.
“Until this year, (SAVE) was largely unusable by election administrators,” Orey said. “The system has historically relied on user agencies to submit a DHS identifier, so something like an a number, an alien number, that would identify an individual in the system. And that’s information that few, if any, election officers have on hand for voters.”
Still, the new system is untested, and Orey recommends that states proceed cautiously.
The pre-overhaul system tended to produce about 20% inconclusive results, which required election administrators to independently verify whether flagged voters were citizens. A typo in a name or Social Security number could risk disenfranchising otherwise eligible voters who didn’t have documentary proof of citizenship on hand, as research shows many voters lack, Orey said.
It’s unclear whether the new system would produce fewer false positives.
Some worry that a high number of non-matches, due to database gaps, might bolster the idea that noncitizen voting fraud is a widespread problem.
Cooper doesn’t believe the program is being used to prop up a false narrative; rather, the people supporting it genuinely believe there are too many noncitizens voting.
“It’s an open question as to how many is too many?” Cooper said. “I think that’s where there’s legitimate disagreement. What level of false positive is acceptable, what level of false negative is also acceptable? So to me, it’s more a battle over where the line should be.”
Devil’s in the details
Last November, North Carolinians overwhelmingly voted to amend the state Constitution to make it explicitly clear that noncitizens are not allowed to vote.
While some thought the Constitution was already fairly clear on the matter, and the ballot measure was nothing more than a political tool to rally the Republican base, it didn’t make any difference. Democrats and Republicans alike supported the change.
In December, North Carolina’s election board began removing noncitizens from the voter roll who were identified through lists of people excused from jury duty for claiming noncitizenship, per a 2023 law.
The elections board entered into an agreement with U.S. CIS to verify suspected noncitizens’ statuses.
“Under this MOA, U.S. CIS does not get access to the voter rolls in North Carolina,” Gannon told Carolina Public Press. “Instead, the State queries the SAVE database regarding the few individual voters who may not be citizens based on their requested excusal from jury duty for that purpose, and the results of any other research.”
As of March, three noncitizens have been removed from the voter rolls through this process, according to SBE data. Overall, five noncitizens were removed from the state’s voter roll between January and March, compared to about 2,800 removed felons, 25,000 removed dead voters and 43,000 voters who moved out of their precincts.
Despite relatively rare instances of noncitizen voting, it’s politically unpopular to oppose measures that might crack down on it, Cooper said.
“Everyone thinks it’s a good idea to have more updated databases and to make sure that only citizens can vote, but the devil’s in the details, as it so often is in election administration,” he said. “It seems like an easy solution, but the reality is much more complicated.”
Even though the elections board missed the Aug. 27 deadline to be part of the first wave of the updated SAVE program, Webb doesn’t consider that a good sign. She expects they will be back, this time to accept the offer.
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