A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has put a stop to the Trump administration’s plan to use a redesigned immigration database to check the accuracy of voter registration records across the country, delivering a setback to President Donald Trump’s push to expand federal involvement in elections before the November midterms.
The Department of Homeland Security had reworked one of its systems — known as SAVE — last year following a Trump executive order directing state and local governments to be able to verify the immigration and citizenship status of voters. The overhaul allowed users to conduct bulk searches of records, a significant change from how the system previously operated.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued a 75-page ruling Monday, ruling in favor of voting rights and privacy groups who contended that the changes to SAVE made it less reliable and put eligible voters at risk of being wrongly removed from the rolls. Judge Sooknanan was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden.
The ruling arrives at a politically charged moment, with Trump’s Republican Party fighting hard to hold onto control of both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly claimed that states are failing to stop voter fraud — a claim that state-level audits and academic research have consistently found to be unsupported, given how rarely fraud actually occurs. Trump has also continued to falsely claim that fraudulent activity cost him the 2020 presidential election.
Opponents of the voter roll verification push argue that the effort is less about protecting election integrity and more about political strategy — specifically, reducing the number of voters in ways that could disadvantage Democratic-leaning citizens.
