Court backs Trump on voter database

The Supreme Court ruled six to three that the Trump administration can use a federal citizenship database to verify voters ahead of midterm elections, lifting a lower court block.

What the database does

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system is a forty year old immigration database that the Department of Homeland Security wants to expand to help states screen voter records for noncitizens.

Majority's reasoning

The court's conservative majority said Congress authorized such information sharing in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and blocking it inhibits the government's efforts to administer fair elections.

“The District Court's order thus inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”

Dissenters' objection

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan argued the majority misreads the law to override privacy protections on citizenship information, and that harm to lawful voters outweighs government harm.

“In my view, however, the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.”

Practical impact is limited

The National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from purging voters within ninety days of an election, so the ruling only allows individualized inquiries rather than bulk searches, meaning minimal short term impact.

“will likely have a minimal, short-term impact”

Trump's framing of the issue

President Donald Trump has characterized noncitizen voting as a pressing threat to free and fair elections, but audits of voter rolls have suggested that voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare.