The Texas Tribune
u/texastribune
A place for news and discussion about politics in the Lone Star State, with more politics than /r/Texas and more Texas than /r/politics.
A place for news and discussion about politics in the Lone Star State, with more politics than /r/Texas and more Texas than /r/politics.
A federal tool to check voter citizenship keeps making mistakes. It led to confusion in Texas.
A Department of Homeland Security tool once mostly used to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits, has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of President Trump, who has long falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens lurk on state voter rolls, tainting American elections.
At Trump’s direction, DHS has pooled confidential data from across the federal government to enable states to mass-verify voters’ citizenship status using Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. Many of the nation’s Republican secretaries of state have eagerly embraced the experiment, agreeing to upload all or part of their rolls. Texas was among the first states to try the augmented tool.
But an examination of SAVE’s rollout byu/ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reveals that DHS rushed the revamped tool into use while it was still adding data and before it could discern voters’ most up-to-date citizenship information.
The tool has made persistent mistakes, particularly in assessing the status of people born outside the U.S., data gathered from local election administrators, interviews and emails obtained via public records requests show. Some of those people subsequently become U.S. citizens, a step that the system doesn’t always pick up.
In Texas, news reports began emerging about voters being mistakenly flagged as noncitizens soon after state officials announced the results of running the state’s voter roll through SAVE in October.
Our reporting showed these errors were more widespread than previously known, involving at least 87 voters across 29 counties. County election administrators suspect there may be more. Confusion took hold when the Texas secretary of state’s office sent counties lists of flagged voters and directed clerks to start demanding proof of citizenship and to remove people from the rolls if they didn’t respond.
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson declined an interview request. Her spokesperson, Alicia Pierce, said the office hadn’t reviewed SAVE’s citizenship determination before sending lists to counties because it isn’t an investigative agency. In a statement, Pierce added that the use of SAVE was part of the office’s “constitutional and statutory duty to ensure that only eligible citizens participate in Texas elections.”
A place for news and discussion about politics in the Lone Star State, with more politics than /r/Texas and more Texas than /r/politics.
A place for all things Texas. Please familiarize yourself with the rules, y'all.
A place for all things Texas. Please familiarize yourself with the rules, y'all.
A federal tool to check voter citizenship keeps making mistakes. It led to confusion in Texas.
A Department of Homeland Security tool once mostly used to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits, has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of President Trump, who has long falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens lurk on state voter rolls, tainting American elections.
At Trump’s direction, DHS has pooled confidential data from across the federal government to enable states to mass-verify voters’ citizenship status using Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. Many of the nation’s Republican secretaries of state have eagerly embraced the experiment, agreeing to upload all or part of their rolls. Texas was among the first states to try the augmented tool.
But an examination of SAVE’s rollout byu/ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reveals that DHS rushed the revamped tool into use while it was still adding data and before it could discern voters’ most up-to-date citizenship information.
The tool has made persistent mistakes, particularly in assessing the status of people born outside the U.S., data gathered from local election administrators, interviews and emails obtained via public records requests show. Some of those people subsequently become U.S. citizens, a step that the system doesn’t always pick up.
In Texas, news reports began emerging about voters being mistakenly flagged as noncitizens soon after state officials announced the results of running the state’s voter roll through SAVE in October.
Our reporting showed these errors were more widespread than previously known, involving at least 87 voters across 29 counties. County election administrators suspect there may be more. Confusion took hold when the Texas secretary of state’s office sent counties lists of flagged voters and directed clerks to start demanding proof of citizenship and to remove people from the rolls if they didn’t respond.
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson declined an interview request. Her spokesperson, Alicia Pierce, said the office hadn’t reviewed SAVE’s citizenship determination before sending lists to counties because it isn’t an investigative agency. In a statement, Pierce added that the use of SAVE was part of the office’s “constitutional and statutory duty to ensure that only eligible citizens participate in Texas elections.”
A place for all things Texas. Please familiarize yourself with the rules, y'all.
A place for news and discussion about politics in the Lone Star State, with more politics than /r/Texas and more Texas than /r/politics.
A place for news and discussion about politics in the Lone Star State, with more politics than /r/Texas and more Texas than /r/politics.
