As the November midterm elections approach, the Trump administration continues to push unsubstantiated claims about widespread noncitizen voting using flimsy evidence primarily based on half-baked list-matching efforts. In fact, a whistleblower has revealed that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) actions likely violate state laws meant to protect voters’ sensitive data. In doing so, the administration is following an old playbook to produce inflated numbers that can then be used to confuse voters, spread a false narrative about voter fraud, and justify voter suppression. Worst of all, these extreme efforts are improperly flagging eligible American citizens who could be prevented from casting a ballot if they do not understand how to protect their right to vote.
Central to this endeavor is the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, a tool originally intended to assist agencies with verifying the eligibility of immigrants for government benefits. DHS is now using SAVE to attempt to identify noncitizens on the voter rolls. These list-matching programs, where state voter rolls are compared to potentially incorrect or incomplete federal data, are often flawed because of poor data quality or simply outdated information.
While a federal judge blocked the expanded use of this system in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on September 25 that the Trump administration could, for now, make the expansive data system available to the states to review voter rolls for potential matches. DHS’ most egregious results have come from states that have been wary of the administration’s efforts. In those instances, DHS has matched alleged voter data against SAVE without the transparency or accuracy that should exist. The use of SAVE for this purpose ignores the legal framework and the real challenges states face in maintaining accurate voter rolls. With the Supreme Court’s recent decision, it is critical to understand the difference between illegal voter purges and standard list maintenance practices required under state and federal law to identify impermissible activity that could potentially disenfranchise eligible American citizens.
Routine list maintenance and why it matters
As courts across the country have made clear, maintaining voter rolls is the job of state and local election administrators. This includes voter removals conducted under the careful oversight of state and local election officials. The process takes time and resources, and it results in the regular removal of people who are no longer eligible to vote. This is a near-constant effort because, every day, there are Americans in communities across the country who change addresses, change their name, or otherwise become eligible or ineligible to vote. Every state except North Dakota—which does not have voter registration—follows its own law, in addition to federal laws, to determine whether a voter should be removed.
The most significant law for both voter registration and list maintenance has been the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, which is often referred to as “motor voter” because it requires states to offer voter registration to Americans when they are conducting driver’s license transactions. This remains the largest source of voter registration in the United States. In 44 states and the District of Columbia—which are subject to the NVRA because they required voter registration and did not have Election Day registration at polling places by August 1, 1994—the law also directs state and local officials on how voter list maintenance should proceed. Passed with bipartisan support, the NVRA provides guidance on the conditions for removal, requiring that they be uniform, nondiscriminatory, and compliant with the Voting Rights Act. Congress recognized further protections and prohibited systematic removals within 90 days of a federal election to prevent the potential disenfranchisement of Americans.
The NVRA was written to strike a balance between access and integrity. At times, friction created by inefficiencies with the voter registration and list maintenance system can have a real impact on the voter experience. After long lines at polling stations made headlines during the 2012 presidential election, President Barack Obama famously said, “We have to fix that.” In response, he established the 10-member Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Following a six-month study, the commission’s recommendations showed that out-of-date voter registrations were a significant contributor to the long lines. Voter registration and list maintenance are two sides of the same coin: Up-to-date registrations and lists help improve the election administration process for officials and voters.
The problem: False positives and false claims
State list-matching is an important method of maintaining voter lists, but problems arise when the process is rushed or based on faulty data. DHS’ efforts have continuously resulted in inaccurate matching and overstated numbers. Given the more than 200 million registered voters, it is all too easy to falsely identify a registration as evidence of fraud. Professors Michael McDonald and Justin Levitt illustrated this by extending to voter rolls the infamous “birthday problem”—a concept that refers to the surprisingly high probability that any two people in a group share the same birthday. McDonald and Levitt point out that an election official finding two registered voters with the same first and last name and birthday has quite likely not discovered fraud but instead a statistical coincidence. According to a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, around 50,000 people in the United States have their name, date of birth, and last four digits of their Social Security number in common with at least one other U.S. citizen. The sheer magnitude of this phenomenon illustrates the need for election officials to exercise care when cleaning voter rolls—just the opposite of the rushed effort that DHS is pushing.
Bad-faith voter “matching” efforts are often used to provide sensational numbers in an effort to undermine the credibility of elections and spread fear of fraud. During a primetime address this summer, President Donald Trump made inflated claims about noncitizens on the voter rolls, which DHS tried to support by releasing a same-day statement asserting 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote. As state officials and others pressed for information, the claims simply did not hold up. This is a recurring problem, particularly for DHS: In July 2026, the department had originally flagged close to 16,000 voters as potential noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls, but it could later only provide 185 names for review. In September, state election officials shared that after investigating each name on this list, all 185 were U.S. citizens. Such exaggerations harm public trust in elections, by design.
In mid-September, a DHS whistleblower alleged that officers have been illegally accessing sensitive state voter information for their “unlawful voter initiative” in order to match it with often-faulty DHS data, compiled by using a mysterious methodology the department calls “supplemental magic.” These efforts, which the whistleblower revealed require agents to impersonate a voter in a state database, likely violate state laws. Additionally, given the rushed nature of the effort, many U.S. citizens are being falsely flagged as noncitizens, which has serious implications that could affect some voters for the midterm elections.
While the Trump administration has federalized this playbook with the list-matching campaign at DHS, exaggerated claims about voter rolls are not new. In 2011 and 2012, the Republican secretaries of state in Michigan, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida made sensational claims about alleged fraud on their states’ voter rolls, each of which was subsequently found to be outrageously inflated. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, for example, initially flagged 180,000 potential noncitizen voter registrations, yet a more thorough review resulted in the removal of only 85 alleged noncitizens from the rolls. Florida’s list-matching hunt for noncitizen voters even falsely flagged a Brooklyn-born World War II veteran as a suspected noncitizen, among others.
Americans, regardless of their preferred candidate or party, should not let sensational or unsubstantiated claims about the voter rolls deter them from participating.
Previous attempts to match voter rolls to the SAVE system have both identified very low numbers of noncitizens on the rolls and suffered a significant rate of false positives, where U.S. citizens have been incorrectly identified. For example, Missouri, one of the earliest states to adopt use of the SAVE system, incorrectly identified hundreds of U.S. citizens; a clerk in Boone County shared that more than half of those flagged in her county were citizens. Texas, meanwhile, ran its entire voter roll through the SAVE system, which flagged 2,724 potential noncitizens for review; yet ultimately, only 117—or approximately 0.0006 percent of the 18.7 million registered voters in Texas—were referred for investigation.
While some states have pursued removals based on matching that potentially violates the NVRA, others have seen local election officials painstakingly investigate each name provided to them. This due diligence is a critical step for election officials to protect the right to vote of Americans who could be improperly identified. This distinction also highlights a consequence of faulty data-matching efforts. When imprecise data are used and false positives are higher, election officials must bear the burden of verifying the accuracy of voter records.
Check your registration status
Americans also can take proactive steps to protect their right to vote. The best way to override bad-faith efforts at purging the voter rolls is for each voter to check their registration and confirm that it is up to date. If a voter is falsely flagged as a noncitizen, they might not be notified in time to remedy this error, as election mail can get lost or go to outdated addresses. Fortunately, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires states to provide provisional ballots, a backup voting measure available to voters when their eligibility is in question. If voters find themselves incorrectly removed from the voter rolls, or if they are unsure of their registration status on Election Day, provisional ballots offer a failsafe to cast a ballot and allow election officials to verify eligibility before counting. While provisional ballots are never a first choice, understanding that option can help eligible voters ensure their voice is heard and their vote is counted.
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Conclusion
Rather than making elections safer, the Trump administration’s unsubstantiated claims have wasted resources by spreading disinformation and causing confusion as the November elections approach. This appears to be another effort to further support the administration’s false claims about the integrity of our elections at the expense of American voters and taxpayers, who will unfortunately pay the price—along with the state and local election officials forced to clean up the mess. Americans, regardless of their preferred candidate or party, should not let sensational or unsubstantiated claims about the voter rolls deter them from participating. Know the facts, check your registration status, and make a plan to vote.