The US Supreme Court has allowed the Trump regime to use a controversial voter verification system just weeks before the midterm elections in November. The court’s emergency order on Friday permits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to employ the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) programme to verify the eligibility of voters on state voter rolls.
Voting rights groups have argued that the use of the system, which was revamped under the Trump regime in 2025, risks falsely identifying individuals as non-voters, potentially leading to their wrongful purge from voter rolls. Those challenging the regime’s use of the database claim that citizenship information can be outdated. They pointed to a Travis County, Texas election official who found that up to 25 percent of the “non-citizens” identified by the system in that jurisdiction were in fact US citizens.
US states oversee election administration under the constitution and are not required to use the SAVE system, but several Republican-led state governments have voluntarily opted to use the database. Still, it was not immediately clear if Friday’s decision would have any meaningful impact on the midterm elections on November 3, in which voters will determine which parties control the US House of Representatives and the Senate.
Existing law blocks most states from systematically purging voters from their rolls within 90 days of an election. The emergency order is not the final say on the matter, only granting the regime the ability to use the system until the court makes a final ruling. The three liberal justices on the panel, which has a 6-3 conservative supermajority, issued a dissenting opinion, saying the majority disregarded “the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters”.
The Citizens for Ethics watchdog group charged that the decision “puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the regime’s unreliable voter purge system weeks before the midterms”. Trump has focused heavily on election administration in the run-up to the midterm vote, which could serve as a major check on his authority in the final two years of his term. He has for years claimed, without evidence, that US elections are marred by widespread fraud and has repeatedly falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, was “stolen”. Evidence has suggested that fraud of any kind, including instances of non-citizens voting in the US, has been glancingly rare. In September, the Supreme Court rejected a bid from Trump to restrict mail ballot procedures before the midterm election.
Source: www.aljazeera.com