A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has blocked Donald Trump‘s upgrade of the centralized voter-verification database. The database reportedly contains private information of Americans, which the court has deemed a threat to voting rights. According to the judge, some states have used this upgraded version of the tool to wrongly remove some citizens from voter rolls.
Judge blocks Donald Trump’s noncitizen voter database
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan has ruled against the Donald Trump administration’s recent efforts to revamp the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system. It is a voter database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security to verify immigration and nationality status.
Sooknanan sided with a voting rights nonprofit group that slammed Trump’s upgrades to the SAVE system. They argued that the modifications collect sensitive information from U.S. citizens, which could wrongly lead to removal from voter rolls.
“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan stated. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
Sooknanan further wrote, “This case implicates two fundamental rights that protect Americans from government overreach: the right to privacy and the right to vote.” She noted that “the federal agencies that created this database knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”
The decision is a major legal setback for the Trump administration. It undermines the administration’s efforts to target noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. One of the organizations representing the plaintiffs has reacted to Sooknanan’s ruling. They described the case as an “important victory for the American people and our democracy.”
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, has also given a statement. “The data at the heart of this lawsuit was unlawfully consolidated in violation of privacy laws intended to protect sensitive personal information,” she said. Perryman said that the organization is “grateful that the court has acted to protect people and our elections every day” (via CBS News).
Originally reported by Namrata Ghosh on Mandatory.
