The Justice Department has launched a wide-ranging effort to obtain voter registration files from nearly every state and review them for suspected non-citizens, using a federal immigration database system known as SAVE. This push marks a significant challenge to a decades-old assumption that systematic voter roll purges must be completed at least 90 days before an election under the National Voter Registration Act.
President Donald Trump and his administration have made aggressive claims about non-citizen voting, despite research indicating the practice is very rare. Republican officials argue that the 90-day quiet period does not apply to removal programs targeting individuals who should never have been registered. The Trump administration contends in litigation that the restriction does not constrain its voter roll review efforts.
Election officials and voting rights advocates express concern that eligible voters could be mistakenly removed from rolls, particularly during the compressed timeframe before elections. They argue that the quiet period is necessary to allow affected voters adequate opportunity to correct registration errors. Brent Ferguson, senior director of strategic litigation at Campaign Legal Center, which has successfully sued states over violations of the quiet period provision, called the federal government's direct involvement in purges "more concerning," stating that such action would be "clearly illegal."
Data quality issues have already surfaced in voter verification efforts. An Idaho review using SAVE initially flagged 760 potential non-citizens among roughly 1.1 million registered voters, but further investigation resulted in only about three dozen referrals to law enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security reported that as of early April, it had identified 21,000 individuals as potential non-citizens out of 60 million cases submitted, a rate of 0.035 percent. Approximately 3 percent of all comparisons returned inconclusive results.
Inconsistency in how local election officials handle suspected non-citizen matches has also emerged. According to a lawsuit challenging Texas's use of SAVE, some counties conduct additional investigations using citizenship documentation before notifying voters, while others send notices to every person flagged by the system.
Legal precedent offers some guidance. An appeals court ruled in 2014 that Florida could not use SAVE data within 90 days of an election. However, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order in 2024 allowing then-Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to restart a removal program days before the election. That program was later ended when Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger took office.
The Republican National Committee has asked the Supreme Court to resolve the question on the merits in a case from Arizona. Legal experts predict emergency litigation could force courts to rule on removal programs conducted weeks or days before November's election, similar to challenges that arose during the 2024 election cycle.
