USCIS Upgrades SAVE Program for Voter Citizenship Verification with Partial

Published Date : 11/5/2025 

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has expanded the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to allow states to verify voter registration using only the last four digits of a Social Security number (SSN). This move aims to modernize and streamline the verification process, but it also raises concerns about accuracy and privacy. 

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on Monday that states can now use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to verify the citizenship of voter registration applicants and registered voters using only the last four digits of an individual’s Social Security number (SSN). This change means election officials no longer need a registrant’s full nine-digit SSN to confirm citizenship through the federal database, a move USCIS described as a modernization effort designed to make verification more accessible to states that collect only partial Social Security data.

“USCIS remains dedicated to eliminating barriers to securing the nation’s electoral process,” said USCIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser. “By allowing states to efficiently verify voter eligibility, we are reinforcing the principle that America’s elections are reserved exclusively for American citizens. We encourage all federal, state, and local agencies to use the SAVE program.”

The announcement represents a significant expansion of SAVE’s original mission. The program was created to help federal, state, tribal, and local agencies determine eligibility for public benefits, licenses, or grants by verifying whether an individual was a noncitizen or lawfully present in the U.S. Until recently, its use in elections was rare and tightly circumscribed. Under the new guidance, secretaries of state and election officials can now submit bulk queries of voter rolls to the SAVE database using partial SSN data to confirm citizenship status.

USCIS said the change would “provide commonsense tools to verify voters” and help to ensure that “only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections.” The new guidance, spelled out in a Voter Registration and Voter List Maintenance Fact Sheet, also affirms that SAVE results must not be treated as conclusive proof of noncitizenship. If the system cannot verify a registrant’s citizenship, states are required to take additional steps such as contacting the individual directly and offering an opportunity to provide documentation.

Behind the scenes, the upgrade also expands the underlying data sources SAVE draws from, now incorporating Social Security Administration (SSA) Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT) and allowing large-scale, automated queries rather than individual lookups. NUMIDENT is a database maintained by SSA that contains records for everyone who has applied for a Social Security number since 1936.

For states, the upgrade offers a potentially powerful administrative tool. Election officials in jurisdictions that already collect SSNs – or only the last four digits – can now cross-check registrants against a federal data source without violating privacy statutes that limit the disclosure of full SSNs. Many states have faced increasing pressure to maintain clean voter rolls under the National Voter Registration Act, and some see SAVE as a way to demonstrate diligence in preventing noncitizen voting.

Yet, the same features that make the program attractive to states are also what critics say make it risky. Its use in elections may outpace the system’s design, accuracy, and safeguards. Civil rights advocates, voting experts, and immigration policy researchers have warned that SAVE was never designed to serve as a definitive measure of citizenship. The database primarily contains records for individuals who have interacted with the immigration system – noncitizens, lawful permanent residents, or naturalized citizens – and has little to no data on citizens born in the United States who have never dealt with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

A non-match in SAVE, therefore, does not prove that someone is not a citizen. The Brennan Center for Justice and the Fair Elections Center have both noted that this limitation could lead to widespread errors if states use SAVE data to challenge or purge voters. Many Americans born before the Social Security Administration began systematically recording citizenship information in the 1970s may not appear in the database at all.

The Government Accountability Office raised similar concerns in a March 2017 audit, finding that many SAVE user agencies failed to complete required follow-up verification steps when an initial check was inconclusive. In that report, GAO found that “from fiscal years 2012 through 2016, the majority of SAVE user agencies that received a SAVE response prompting them to institute additional verification did not complete the required additional steps to further verify the benefit applicant’s immigration status.”

If election officials rely on the system’s preliminary results without verifying them manually, eligible voters could be wrongly flagged as noncitizens. In July, the Brennan Center warned that the new bulk query functionality and relaxed SSN requirements increase the potential for such mistakes by multiplying the number of records subject to automated matching. The report noted that recent changes to SAVE – specifically, allowing bulk queries of voter roll data and relaxed matching using Social Security numbers – “raise significant concerns” because these features “increase the risks that state officials will carry out erroneous voter purges and disenfranchise eligible voters.”

Privacy advocates have also raised alarms about the expansion. SAVE’s traditional function of verifying benefit eligibility required only limited, one-off checks. The new election-related use transforms it into a massive, ongoing data matching operation linking voter rolls to federal databases. And that raises serious questions about data security, the scope of information sharing between state and federal agencies, and compliance with the Privacy Act. Critics argue that neither USCIS nor state election offices have adequately explained how data from these voter roll checks will be stored, used, or audited.

The Fair Elections Center emphasized in July that USCIS’s recent changes were rolled out without sufficient public notice, transparency, or updated privacy impact assessments. Members of Congress have expressed similar unease. Senators Alex Padilla, Gary Peters, and Jeff Merkley warned in July that more than nine million voter records had already been queried through SAVE without clear oversight or congressional review. The lawmakers argued that using an immigration database to check voter rolls risks creating a surveillance apparatus that could chill participation among naturalized citizens and immigrant communities.

While DHS insists that SAVE is simply providing a service to help states comply with federal voting laws, its use in this context marks a significant shift toward federal involvement in state election administration. The new policy also revives a longstanding debate about accuracy versus access. Even if SAVE’s modernization improves technical efficiency, it does not resolve fundamental issues of data completeness or due process. Election law experts warn that any system used to determine eligibility must guarantee robust notice and appeal rights for those flagged as potentially ineligible.

If states purge voters based solely on SAVE results without giving them an opportunity to contest, the process could violate the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections and the National Voter Registration Act’s safeguards against improper roll maintenance. For observers concerned with surveillance and national security governance, the SAVE expansion illustrates a broader pattern: identity verification systems built for one purpose gradually being repurposed for another. What began as a tool for immigration and benefit eligibility verification is now an instrument of election integrity enforcement.

Such mission creep often occurs faster than the development of oversight structures. SAVE’s new bulk query and SSN matching capabilities resemble other large-scale identity infrastructures that have raised accountability issues within the intelligence and homeland security communities. The interconnection between federal and state systems further complicates oversight. While each participating state must sign a user agreement with USCIS and comply with its procedural requirements, the agency has disclosed little about how it monitors compliance or enforces corrective actions.

Transparency around error rates, mismatches, and follow-up outcomes remains limited. Without public reporting, neither voters nor lawmakers can easily assess whether SAVE’s use in elections protects against ineligible voting or instead creates new risks of disenfranchisement. The implications reach beyond election policy. SAVE’s expanded capacity blurs the boundary between administrative verification and surveillance, embedding federal data infrastructure directly into the democratic process. The same database that checks eligibility for Medicaid or driver’s licenses now plays a role in determining who can vote.

From a national security and governance perspective, this fusion of functions raises questions about institutional design and accountability, and whether systems optimized for efficiency can also safeguard fundamental rights. Monday’s announcement by USCIS underscores that tension. By allowing states to rely on partial SSN data, USCIS has made SAVE easier to use but also more expansive in reach. The agency frames the change as a modernization effort aligned with its statutory responsibilities, but critics see it as the latest step in a steady evolution of federal identity systems into tools of civic regulation. The coming months will test whether the new protocol can balance the legitimate aim of election integrity with the equally critical imperative of protecting voters’ rights, privacy, and trust. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS): 

Q: What is the SAVE program used for?

A: The SAVE program (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) is used to verify the immigration status of individuals applying for public benefits, licenses, or grants. It helps federal, state, tribal, and local agencies determine eligibility.

Q: How does the new guidance change the SAVE program?

A: The new guidance allows states to use the SAVE program to verify voter registration using only the last four digits of a Social Security number (SSN), rather than the full nine-digit SSN.

Q: Why is this change significant?

A: This change is significant because it makes the verification process more accessible for states that collect only partial SSN data, potentially streamlining the process of confirming voter eligibility.

Q: What are the concerns raised by civil rights advocates?

A: Civil rights advocates are concerned that the SAVE program was not designed to definitively verify citizenship and that non-matches could lead to widespread errors, potentially disenfranchising eligible voters.

Q: How does the expansion of the SAVE program impact privacy?

A: The expansion of the SAVE program into election-related use raises concerns about data security, the scope of information sharing between state and federal agencies, and compliance with privacy laws. 

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