Earlier this year, we praised an effort to use a federal data source to aid the state of Texas in cleaning its voter rolls. The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system has long been used by state and local governments to verify legal immigration or citizenship status for benefits and licenses. It made sense to make the tool more easily accessible to state elections officials to check voter rolls for potentially ineligible voters.
We remain convinced that the use of this tool is worthwhile, even as critics warned that it’s flawed. Any verification system will have imperfections, and it’s incumbent on state officials to take steps to remedy those problems, for the sake of Texas voters and the county officials who administer elections.
According to the news outlet Votebeat, hundreds of voters flagged by SAVE had registered to vote with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship and keeps a record.
Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced in the fall that the SAVE system had flagged more than 2,700 voters as potential noncitizens and that her office had provided lists to counties to vet the voters. But Nelson’s office didn’t check the SAVE results against DPS records before sending the list to counties.
Opinion
That seems like an oversight that is easy to fix. Celia Israel, the official in charge of administering elections in Travis County, told Votebeat that she reached out to Nelson’s office, which referred her to DPS. But that agency told Israel that it couldn’t help her directly, so Israel reached out again to Nelson’s office.
DPS got a request from Nelson’s office to check the citizenship of 97 people, the number of potential noncitizens flagged in Travis County, though the agency wouldn’t confirm the request was about Travis County voters, according to Votebeat.
It seems like Nelson might be reacting to Israel’s request for help, as she should. However, the fact that this voter roll cleanup with SAVE identified so many people who had registered to vote with DPS deserves a deeper look from Nelson’s office. At the very least, she should ensure that lists of potential noncitizens flagged through SAVE are cross-referenced with DPS voter registrant records.
Some people flagged have indeed turned out not to be citizens. The Denton County elections administrator told Votebeat that county officials had registered 14 people in error, even though they had disclosed in voter registration forms that they were noncitizens. None of those people had voted, according to the county.
Texas has invited skepticism about its voter roll cleanups because past efforts have erroneously flagged thousands of U.S. citizens in an effort to boost the myth that there is widespread voter fraud. The use of the SAVE system strikes us as an honest attempt to clean up voter rolls, and we urge Nelson’s office to review the outcomes of the recent round of voter roll maintenance. She should coordinate with DPS to ensure that lists provided to counties are more accurate.