What did the court say about the modified SAVE database?

The Supreme Court recently gave the Trump administration a win on its so-called election integrity efforts, ruling in favor of the government's attempt to weed out exceedingly rare cases of noncitizen voting using the modified SAVE database, which has been newly updated with data from the Social Security Administration. The database was “dramatically revamped” to allow searching through bulk uploads of voter lists for potential noncitizens. 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson highlighted in her dissent that the newly shared SSA data that has been linked to the modified SAVE database “contains information about natural-born U.S. citizens as well as naturalized citizens and noncitizens," which she suggested could lead to citizens being pulled into bulk searches and potentially flagged for removal from the voter rolls. 

There are already examples of citizens being inaccurately flagged by the modified SAVE database. In one review of registrants flagged by the database in Texas, “some 20% were later found to be citizens who were reinstated.” 

The court's ruling also notes that the National Voter Registration Act does not allow states to conduct “any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters” less than 90 days prior to an election, but included the footnote:

The Trump administration may use this nonanswer about the 90-day moratorium from the Supreme Court as an opportunity to ignore the moratorium and encourage states to do mass purges of voter rolls using the data from DHS. 

All of this is to the delight of figures like Cleta Mitchell and Hans Von Spakovsky who agree: The voter roll purges must go on. 

What are election deniers saying about the ruling?

Right-wing media figures with ties to the election denial movement have called for purges based on the Supreme Court’s ruling — despite the clear language barring such purges within 90 days of the election.

War Room host Steve Bannon introduced one of his segments about the ruling by calling it “a flashing green to go purge these voter rolls with 39 days left” and hosted guests who argued the 90-day moratorium is moot. 

Former Justice Department official Jeff Clark — who in 2022 praised the election conspiracy theory film 2000 Mules — spoke with Bannon about the ruling on the evening of September 25, arguing that the 90-day moratorium from NVRA is “blown up” because of an Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act — or IIRAIRA — provision that he says is “very clear.” The passage Clark seems to be quoting apparently pertains to the sharing of information about citizenship and immigration status between government entities, not the removal of registered voters from the voter rolls.

Bannon asked Clark if states “can purge these voter rolls and do it right now for the 3 November election” despite the 90-day moratorium, to which Clark replied, “Yes.” 

Clark also dismissed cases where individuals have been incorrectly flagged as noncitizens and barred from voting if they don't prove their citizenship fast enough, saying, “Tough.” He argued, “It's reasonable to expect people who want to vote … to come forth and prove that and to prove that on a timely basis.” 

During the same edition Clark appeared on, election denial activist Cleta Mitchell made similar arguments, claiming that the 90-day moratorium was irrelevant because it “only applies to what the statute says is a systematic review and analysis of the voter rolls.” She called for a “very targeted process” of finding individuals who may be noncitizens. Mitchell encouraged people to use “citizen challenge laws” and go to their local election officials to demand “that those names come off before the election.”

During these interviews, Bannon raised the issue of whether Democrat-run states could be forced by DHS to use the SAVE database to clean their voter rolls. He asked Clark, “Practically, can the White House just tell people, Hey, the decree came out, and you're going to purge those voter rolls because the 90 days is not relevant?” Clark claimed the ruling will “disproportionately have an effect of making it harder to have the Democrats, you know, steal elections using illegals votes in red states than in blue states because, you know, it's not like Adrian Fontes in Arizona is going to be all hepped up about trying to get this information.” Mitchell argued that DHS “can make public the numbers, and they need to fight back when these blue state secretaries of state, these Democrat secretaries of state, who wanna act like there's nothing to see here. There's a lot to see here.”

Hans von Spakovsky — who has worked to “raise unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud throughout the course of his decades-long career as a conservative activist” — also offered up action items on “blue states” that do not purge their voter rolls during a radio interview this week. He claimed that “there's one current remedy which is the U.S. Department of Justice suing California under the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls.”

Von Spakovsky also put forward that passing the SAVE America Act would “force blue states to actually check for citizenship” and agreed with the host that placing ICE agents at polling sites would deter noncitizens from voting.

Newsmax's Carl Higbie monologued about the ruling, calling it a “major win for the midterm elections” and saying he is “interested to see if this cuts away any historical Democrat voting numbers.”

Whether they are willfully ignoring the 90-day moratorium provision, arguing it simply does not count, or conspiring to create work-arounds, these right-wing media figures are more than happy to have the Supreme Court backing up their efforts to create chaos during the November elections.