Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court To Approve Voter Database [Op-Ed]

Source: CJ Gunther / Getty

We’re only two months away from the midterm elections, but that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from doing everything in its power to sow chaos and undermine confidence in the outcome. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court for permission to use Social Security data to verify state voter rolls. 

The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration created the “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements,” or SAVE system in response to an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last year. The executive order called for creating a database using people’s private Social Security data to “protect the integrity of our election process.”

Like most of Trump’s attempts to federalize control of elections, several voting rights groups sued to block the database. In June, District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan blocked the administration from using the database.

Sooknanan wrote that the administration had “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable,” adding that “since then, states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.” 

The Trump administration tried to have the block revoked, but an appeals court upheld the ruling, so now the administration is appealing to the Supreme Court. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called Sooknanan’s ruling “indefensible” and said it “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections.” 

“SAVE does not disqualify any voter; instead, it merely notifies the States whether the federal government can confirm citizenship,” Sauer wrote. “Thus, any voter injury is caused by the States, not by the federal government, and would not be redressed by the relief the court entered against the federal government.”

It’s wild that we’ve had countless elections without this tool. If there were a real need for the election screening tool, the Trump administration could provide an extensive list of noncitizens who have participated in elections. 

They can’t, and that’s because this isn’t really about noncitizen voting. The tool wasn’t made to prevent undocumented people from voting; it’s about making it harder for citizens to vote against the Republican Party. We’ve already seen how the moves Trump is making have played out in Kansas, where a 2011 voter ID law disenfranchised 30,000 citizens who would have otherwise been able to vote. 

The Trump administration’s repeated requests to exert control over elections are, sadly, a real test of how seriously the Supreme Court takes the Constitution. The Court’s conservative majority has repeatedly stressed its originalist bona fides, a legal philosophy that interprets the Constitution as the Founding Fathers originally intended. 

The Constitution is very clear that control of election laws largely rests with the states, and occasionally with Congress. The executive branch has little to no influence on elections, because that’s how you get rigged elections. 

While the Supreme Court has pushed back against Trump at times, it’s also been OK with gutting the Voting Rights Act, overturning Roe v. Wade, and allowing the Postal Service to move forward with a rule that hampers mail-in voting. So sadly, it’s a dice roll on whether the Court will uphold the Constitution’s limits on executive power when it comes to elections

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