Republican secretaries of state ask DHS for better data to check for noncitizen voters
As the federal government dials back some of its election security programs, particularly those that prevented interference by Russia, a group of Republican secretaries of state are asking for a different variety of election safeguards.
In a letter addressed to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Norm last Thursday, 21 secretaries of state asked for improvements to her department’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program, so they can more easily detect noncitizens who are voting in elections.
“As President Trump has explicitly conveyed, ensuring noncitizens do not vote in our elections is crucial to protecting the integrity of elections in our respective states; however, to vigorously and successfully assume this charge, improvements addressing current limitations within the program are vital,” the letter reads.
The SAVE program is a service administered by DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that allows agencies to check citizenship or immigration status, but it’s outdated and reportedly clumsy to operate. Searches require certain identifiers, like alien registration numbers, and searches can’t be performed using more common personal information, like names and dates of birth.
The secretaries of state asked that Noem make the system available to states at no cost, to make it possible to conduct searches using more identifying information and to make it possible to search for multiple voters at once. They also asked the department to provide more clear guidance to state election officials on when they’re permitted to use the SAVE system.
“Through the implementation of these enhancements, state officials may better serve the entire country, not just their respective constituents,” the letter reads. “Disallowing interference from noncitizens in the elections process is a fundamental role we must not only assume, but champion. We are hopeful, through your support, significant advancements will be made to further protect the integrity of our state and federal elections.”
The request follows a similar one made last month by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who also signed last week’s letter. Raffensperger’s request follows an audit last October of his state’s voter rolls that found that just 20 of Georgia’s 8.2 million registered voters were not U.S. citizens. That audit found that none of those 20 had cast a ballot in the 2024 election.
Such low noncitizen voting turnout runs counter to a false claim repeated by some pro-Trump Republicans that millions of illegal immigrants vote in U.S. elections. In fact, analyses have found voting by noncitizens is exceptionally rare. One study by The Washington Post last year found 85 cases of noncitizens voting over the two decades stretching from 2002 to 2023.
The push for checks on noncitizen voting also arrives as congressional Republicans advance a new requirement that those registering to vote provide proof of citizenship. Some civil rights groups fear the legislation — also called SAVE, or the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — could make it more difficult to register to vote for married people who’ve changed their names and other U.S. citizens. More than 21 million Americans of voting age don’t have proof of citizenship on hand, according to a study published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice.
Harmeet Dhillon, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division, has said she would support legislation requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that U.S. elections are subject to interference by unscrupulous election administrators. He has also repeatedly claimed without evidence that the machines used to count votes are fraudulent. Last week at the White House he called into question the validity of voting machines and mail-in voting.
“No, our elections are extremely dishonest,” Trump said. “We’re the only country in the world that has mail-in voting and all of these different things that we put in. Nobody — no other country in the world has it.”
Mail-in voting is used by more than 90 countries worldwide, including Australia, Canada, India, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The request by the secretaries of state follows a separate letter sent to DHS the previous week in which the National Association of Secretaries of State, led by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, the group’s president, asked for the preservation of several key programs to safeguard elections. These included cybersecurity services for election offices, physical security assessments for voting locations and election offices and support for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
Secretaries of state said the EI-ISAC can “increase the situational awareness of election offices by notifying officials of cyber threats experienced in other states or jurisdictions.” Cuts at DHS, which included partially terminating an agreement with the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which runs the EI-ISAC, may have effectively ended its operation.
