ALBANY, N.Y. — New York election officials can now choose to use an expanded federal database to verify the citizenship of people on voter rolls after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily revived the system Friday, just weeks before the midterm elections.
The court’s order allows states to use an expanded version of the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE, while a legal challenge continues.
The program itself dates back to 1986, but President Donald Trump directed the federal government last year to expand its use for voter eligibility checks. The modified system can search Social Security Administration records, including Social Security numbers, and allows state and local officials to conduct bulk searches of multiple people at once.
If the system cannot confirm that someone is a U.S. citizen, an election agency using SAVE can ask that person to provide additional proof of citizenship.
Assemblyman Joe Sempolinski, a Republican, said the database gives states another way to verify their voter rolls.
“This just gives states, if they choose to use it, another tool in the toolbox,” Sempolinski said.
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal. The dispute centers on how states verify citizenship and what federal information they should be allowed to use in that process.
In New York, Republican lawmakers are already pushing legislation that would require the state to use SAVE.
State Sen. Mark Walczyk sponsors S.2345, which would require the New York State Board of Elections to participate in the federal program to verify the citizenship of people who are registered or registering to vote. The bill remains in the Senate Elections Committee. Assemblyman Matt Slater sponsors the companion legislation, A.6454.
Walczyk, the ranking Republican on the Senate Elections Committee, sent a statement to Spectrum News 1, saying, “Voting in elections is obviously the right, responsibility, and privilege of eligible US Citizens and nobody else should be registered to vote.”
The expanded SAVE system has faced legal challenges over privacy, federal law and the potential for inaccurate citizenship information.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., blocked the modified program in June after finding it violated the Social Security Act, Privacy Act and Administrative Procedure Act. A federal appeals court later declined to pause that ruling.
The Supreme Court’s decision Friday puts the lower court order on hold while the appeal continues.
The Supreme Court has not made a final determination that the expanded SAVE program is lawful.
The League of Women Voters, one of the organizations challenging the program, called Friday’s decision “profoundly disappointing” and said the system could wrongly target eligible voters. The group said the underlying case is not over.
The timing of the ruling also does not mean states can broadly purge voter rolls immediately before November.
The National Voter Registration Act generally requires states to complete programs aimed at systematically removing ineligible voters at least 90 days before a federal election. The Supreme Court acknowledged that restriction limits the immediate effect of its decision, though individualized eligibility inquiries can still take place.
A representative for the New York Civil Liberties Union called that 90-day restriction “a real and strong safeguard” against improper systematic voter removals ahead of the midterms.
For New York, Friday’s ruling does not automatically enroll the state in SAVE. It gives state officials the option to use the expanded federal system while litigation continues.
Whether New York will choose to use it, or whether lawmakers will eventually require the state to do so, remains unresolved.