Legal Challenges Are Mounting as States Face Scrutiny Over Voter Roll Purges and Federal Data Requests
With all attention now becoming focused on Executive Orders from the President suggesting a cancellation of mail-in voting and a “government list of eligible voters,” we must become more familiar with how we have arrived at this juncture and how we will respond as we move forward to the November midterm elections.
New Federal Bill Adds Citizenship Barriers
The Senate has yet to conduct a vote on the well-known “SAVE America Act,” which is loaded with confusing and chaotic requirements—proof of citizenship when registering to vote, either with a passport or a birth certificate—which reportedly is designed “to detect non-citizens” from registering or voting. Those actions are already unlawful, and research reportedly indicates cases of non-citizens voting are minimal and occur at a very low rate.
DOJ Demands For Voter Data, Sues States Not Complying
The Department of Justice has been requesting “complete voter rolls” from all states since last summer, and around nineteen states have complied, with the DOJ now suing thirty states and Washington, D.C., for not complying. The requests cover sensitive, private information such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Its collection by the federal government raises serious privacy and security concerns and may violate state and federal laws.
Related: How to be Prepared for the SAVE Act
The Department of Homeland Security has its own SAVE program—Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), created in 1986 “to verify immigration status for non-citizens applying for federal benefits.” Under the Trump administration, DHS expanded its scope to include natural-born U.S. citizens, allowing states to search voter registration data against Social Security Administration records, passports, and driver licenses, using “a mashup of data from different sources.”
”Kicked off State Voter Rolls”
American citizens have been kicked off state voter rolls, and the creation of what amounts to a “National Citizenship bank” is unconstitutional, per CREW—Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group fears that eligible U.S. citizens will be “wrongfully purged from voter rolls” based upon inaccurate data from the illegally overhauled SAVE system. History also reflects Texas’ own past issues, where an outdated list of “ineligible citizens” from the Texas Department of Public Safety led to the wrongful cancellation of registrations of eligible voters.
Texas Case Shows Real-World Consequences
In October 2025, Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced that the state had identified 1,724 “potential non-citizens” who were registered to vote, one of whom was, in fact, a U.S. citizen, leading to his voter registration being wrongfully canceled. This exemplifies how the use of outdated information can cause errors in identifying eligible voters as ineligible.
As of March 26, 2026, a suit has been filed against the Texas Secretary of State for the state’s “troubling voter purge program” by several LULAC organizations and Common Cause, seeking to “validate voting rights under the National Voting Rights Act” and requesting injunctive and declaratory relief.
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