Supreme Court Reauthorizes SAVE Program, but It’s Not as Big a Deal as Some Would Have You Believe

Stephen Richer

On September 25, the United States Supreme Court reauthorized the federal government’s SAVE program for citizenship checks in voter registration. Predictably, supporters of the Trump administration celebrated the ruling as a “[h]uge victory for election integrity!” (Attorney General Todd Blance), while opponents claimed the ruling put “millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the admin’s unreliable voter purge system weeks before the midterms.” (CREW)

Relax.

As is so often the case with election law rulings, the implications are not nearly as significant as “hot take” social media commentary would have you believe. There is no reason to believe that past elections were riddled with noncitizen voting. As for voter list maintenance and removal, the ruling simply gives election officials one more tool, but as with other tools, its use is narrowly prescribed by state and federal laws.

Additionally, the sound and fury regarding the ruling’s alleged effects on election administration distract from a bigger philosophical question: are we comfortable with the federal government building a citizenship database? That’s something Cato scholars and publications have long looked at with suspicion (see, e.g., Stephen Moore and Jim Harper).

Background:

From 2005 through 2024, election officials primarily used the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to verify that individual registrants had become citizens through naturalization. The SAVE program did not allow for bulk uploads of voter files.

President Trump’s March 25, 2025, executive order titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” attempts to refashion the SAVE program into a universal citizenship database by including data from the Social Security Administration and other government agencies. The expanded SAVE program also allows election officials to upload entire voter lists for citizenship checks. 

The results have been mixed. Both litigation and reporting have shown the SAVE program to be highly imperfect, leading to US citizens being flagged as ineligible to vote (see, especially, this article by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune: “A federal tool to check voter citizenship keeps making mistakes. It led to confusion in Texas.”)

But the expansion of the SAVE program has also prompted a spate of election-integrity-enhancing state and local citizenship audits (I’ve cataloged these at Declare News). Recent write-ups by Utah, Georgia, and Yavapai County, Arizona, show how the SAVE program can contribute to voter roll audits. 

Litigation:

In September 2025, the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the federal government, claiming that the expanded SAVE program violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act. The federal district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and blocked the federal government from using the SAVE program. The Trump administration unsuccessfully appealed to the DC Circuit, asking that the injunction be stayed pending appeal. 

The Supreme Court lifted the district court’s block, but the effect is narrow. Owing to the National Voter Registration Act’s prohibition of systematic removals of registered voters in the 90-day period prior to Election Day, at least for the next month, states and the federal government can only use the SAVE program for one-off citizenship checks—they cannot upload their entire voter rolls for a sweeping audit. In the meantime, the full litigation (as opposed to just the temporary block) will continue.

Aftermath:

When the Supreme Court’s decision came out, I wrote: “This ruling can be a win for the nation’s voter rolls if used responsibly. 

The SAVE program is the only widely encompassing nationwide tool that election administrators have for confirming the citizenship of registered voters. 

That being said, the SAVE program has been shown time after time to be a highly imperfect tool, so election administrators should only use it as a starting point, not as a definitive indicator of citizenship.” 

A number of critics scoffed at the notion of the SAVE program being used responsibly (“Used responsibly?? HAHAHA as if. This will be abused as much as it can be to disenfranchise voters wherever possible.”)

I get it. There are valid reasons to be concerned this election season. But the opportunity for abuse isn’t specific to the SAVE program. There are many tools election administrators have that, if used properly, improve voter list accuracy, but if abused, could lead to adverse actions against registrants. For example, election officials receive reports from the United States Postal Service’s National Change of Address portal (“NCOA”) indicating when a registrant has moved, thereby prompting list maintenance activity. That tool could be abused just as easily as the SAVE program. 

That’s why it’s important for voter registration offices to have internal controls. It’s also why voters should check their registration information before the registration deadline of every major election. Finally, it’s why voting rights groups and government watchdogs are important—if any election office misuses such reports, whether SAVE, NCOA, or otherwise, they should be sued.

But in all likelihood, the SAVE program will be used over the next month in the same way it was used from 2005 to 2024—responsibly, allowing for incremental improvement of American voter rolls. The reauthorized expanded SAVE program will not rescue American elections from non-existent massive voter fraud, nor in a way that disenfranchises thousands of voters.

The dramatic reactions likely have served the partisan, financial (candidates and organizations need to fundraise), or motivational (encouraging people to be watchful of their voter registration status) purposes of political actors. But they likely also contribute to declining confidence in election administration. According to a new report by UC San Diego’s Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections, only 49% of Americans have confidence that the November 2026 midterm elections will be “free and fair.” This is down from 77 percent confidence following the 2024 presidential election, and declines have been bipartisan. New polling by Marist shows similar declines in confidence.

That’s a shame. And it’s why I consistently encourage political commentators to pause for a second before claiming the apocalypse is upon us. There are indeed apocalyptic scenarios on the horizon (President Trump still indulges the idea of declaring a national emergency to take control of election administration), but the reauthorization of the SAVE program isn’t likely to have a profound impact on election administration, and it might even be a small win for the country’s voter rolls.