SCOTUS revived immigration database ahead of November election. Will it be used in Arizona?

LAUREN GILGER: The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Trump another win late last week when the conservative majority revived a controversial immigration database that the Trump administration says is key to combating illegal voting.

Critics, however, say the SAVE database has mistakenly identified some eligible voters as noncitizens attempting to vote.

So, could this database be used here in Arizona heading into November’s elections, which are just weeks away? Sasha Hupka with Votebeat is here in studio now to tell us.

Good morning, Sasha. Thanks for coming in.

SASHA HUPKA: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: Let’s begin with the SAVE system, this big database, right, Sasha? This is an expanded version of this program that’s kind of up for debate right now in this particular court case. Tell us how it works.

SASHA HUPKA: That’s correct. So, when you look at SAVE, it’s this massive system or tool that has been used for years by the Department of Homeland Security. And initially, it was sort of created to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits, things like Social Security and food stamps.

Eventually, that sort of was expanded. People figured out they could use it for other things, right? And so in Arizona, for a very long time, our election officials have used the SAVE system, but they’ve used it in a very specific way, a very limited way, to check voter citizenship if they provided certain unique identifiers, like a naturalization number.

Then last year, the Trump administration expanded this database to allow it to be used as a mass voter verification tool. And so the main component of that was allowing it to be used such that an official could input somebody’s Social Security number or, in many cases, a mass batch of Social Security numbers and receive back some sort of indication as to whether that person was a citizen or not. And so since then, we’ve seen it be used in this expanded way, and that’s what the courts have been weighing in on.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, when we say that this system has incorrectly flagged some voters as illegal, how big of a problem is that?

SASHA HUPKA: That’s a very big problem because I think initially, when election officials in various parts of the country started putting in voters’ information, some of them, I think, expected that just implicitly they could trust this system, that whatever it handed back would be the truth.

And, you know, here in Arizona, we require proof of citizenship upon registration, but in many other states, that’s not necessarily the case. Voters there sign under the penalty of perjury to attest to their citizenship, but they’re not actually required to hand over a passport or anything like that. And so it’s sort of been more of an unknown, potentially, in other states than it has been here. And when these election officials heard back from SAVE like, “Hey, these people aren’t citizens,” some of them, including in Texas, took steps to actually cancel these people.

But then the problem is, if you then find out, “Oh, that person was in fact a citizen. They are an eligible voter,” you land yourself in a position where you’ve potentially disenfranchised somebody, right? Because you canceled or took steps to begin to cancel their registration.

LAUREN GILGER: So that was happening to some people. Now the Supreme Court is allowing the program to be used again before this election, and this came after a lower court judge had put it on hold. There was a dissent in the Supreme Court decision. Tell us what the three liberal justices had to say here.

SASHA HUPKA: Yes. So, there was a dissent. We saw that these justices were really concerned by what had happened in Texas, Missouri and other states. And they felt that, you know, the potential of harm that this system had to the voter really outweighed its benefit to the government. And so based on that and privacy rights, they dissented and said, “You know, we would not have allowed the Trump administration to move forward with using this expanded database.”

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, what does this mean heading into the midterm elections, which are not far off here, Sasha? Will this be used in Arizona in this kind of mass way?

SASHA HUPKA: Not in a mass way. And the reason why is because there is a federal law that essentially prohibits that within 90 days of an election. Currently, we’re sitting at about 30-something days out. We’re a few weeks out from the general election.

And so we’re in essentially a blackout period for mass removal of voters from the rolls. Election officials will be able to use it, though, in an individualized way, similar to the ways in which they were using it previously to confirm certain people’s citizenship. They will still be able to do that.

LAUREN GILGER: So, what does Secretary of State Adrian Fontes have to say about this? Will he be using this heading into the election?

SASHA HUPKA: Well, I think Fontes would maybe make the point — and to be clear, I don’t want to speak for him here, but I have heard him make the point — that, you know, we were already using this. It’s just that the way in which this has been expanded and the ways in which it could be used in a mass way was different.

And so, you know, if you look again at that federal law, we’re within that 90-day period. You’re not going to see before the election there being mass removals of voters. And in fact, even prior to this getting blocked by lower courts and then this Supreme Court decision, you only saw two Arizona counties that had used this in a mass way. They used it very differently: Maricopa and Yavapai.

Maricopa County used it to flag about 200 people on the voter rolls who Recorder Stephen Richer said he thought were not citizens, but he’s never answered questions about whether he vetted those people. And so there’s a concern that a lot of those people very likely are citizens.

And then you saw in Yavapai Recorder Michelle Burchill used it, but the way in which she used it, she did go back and really vet these people and found only a very small number of noncitizens on her voter roll who were, of course, then cancelled. She did also find, though, that the tool could be used to flag dead voters and that there are other sort of ways in which you could responsibly use this tool.

So, you know, there’s sort of a double-edged blade when it comes to SAVE. On one hand, it’s not reliable, and so no one should just be taking its conclusions at face value. That can cause great harm. On the other hand, I think that Arizona, in terms of how it’s used this system in the past and also the ways in which Yavapai County used it, is a good example of how it could still be helpful. You just have to be careful with it.

LAUREN GILGER: You have to be careful with it. All right, lots to watch for going forward. Sasha Hupka with Votebeat joining us. Sasha, thanks so much, as always.

SASHA HUPKA: Thank you.