North Carolina agrees to use Homeland Security program to check voter rolls for noncitizens
RALEIGH, N.C. — In a split vote, the North Carolina State Board of Elections decided Tuesday to move forward with a plan to check the citizenship status of potentially millions of voters using a federal verification program promoted by the Trump administration.
The board’s Republican majority, voting 3-2, agreed to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE program, which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security, to check for noncitizens on the voter rolls.
Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director, said he was confident DHS would protect sensitive voter data.
“I believe this is one of the best and few tools at our disposal, and I would suggest that we avail ourselves of it,” he said.
The board’s two Democrats voted against the plan, with member Siobhan Millen cautioning that DHS could use the data the state sends for immigration enforcement actions.
“I’m sorry, I don’t trust those people and the basis for which they’re using their information,” she said.
A DHS report on the privacy implications of the program notes that the personal identifying information could be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
SAVE has also drawn criticism — both nationally and in North Carolina — for using unreliable or outdated information that could incorrectly identify people as noncitizens.
No immediate removal of voters
For now, the plan will not result in the immediate removal of any voters from the rolls.
A federal law prohibits the systematic removal of voters within 90 days of an election, and officials said they would not be able to implement the program ahead of that deadline for the March 3 primary election. Hayes must also finalize a memorandum of agreement with DHS before the plan takes effect.
Once finalized, the plan would require election officials to provide the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of voters to SAVE, which would then run the data against federal databases to verify citizenship.
Voters identified as noncitizens would be able to challenge their removal before election officials took action against them.
The SAVE program has traditionally been used by federal or state agencies to determine citizenship for people applying for government benefits or licenses.
But recently, officials in the Trump administration have promoted SAVE as a method for states to check voters’ eligibility. They’ve made the program free to use and have targeted certain states — including North Carolina — for early adoption.
In an audit of the 2016 election, the State Board of Elections — under a director put in charge while a Republican governor led the state — concluded that a match with the SAVE database was “not a reliable indicator that a person is not a U.S. citizen.”
The audit detailed several problems with the database, including infrequent updates and issues with naturalized citizens or those who derived citizenship from adoption incorrectly showing up as noncitizens.
“If this database was reliable, I would be fine with using it,” Millen said. “But it seems like as an agency, our experience with (the database) was that it wasn’t.”
Republican member Bob Rucho countered that the program would not “take away” voting rights based on inaccurate information.
“There is a due process that the person can verify or explain to the county board,” he said.