Supreme Court restores Trump's mass voter verification system

On Friday, the US Supreme Court reinstated an expanded voter verification database created by the Trump administration's Justice Department, despite concerns about potential disenfranchisement of eligible voters. The court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, blocked a judge's order that halted state officials from using Social Security numbers and other information to verify the citizenship status of registered voters against federal records.

The majority argued that federal law allows the Department of Homeland Security to request and receive immigration information from sources like the Social Security Administration. The modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database allows users to search multiple records at once and use Social Security numbers for searches.

Since its redesign last year, several Republican-led states have compared their voter rolls to the database, leading to some voter registrations being canceled. Critics argue that these actions are politically motivated and could suppress Democratic-leaning voters. The Supreme Court's three liberal justices dissented, expressing concern that even a few wrongly targeted voters could be harmed by the flawed system, which has an unknown error rate.

The advocacy groups representing the plaintiffs called the court's decision "profoundly disappointing."