Nevada Opts Out of Federal Voter Verification Program, Citing Error Risks

Nevada electoral officials are declining to participate in a federal program designed to identify non-citizen voters, citing concerns that the system could mistakenly flag eligible citizens. Democratic Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar confirmed on Tuesday that Nevada will not join the program, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), as The Nevada Independent reported. This decision rejects a recent request from the Trump administration to integrate with the voluntary program.

Aguilar's decision follows a request received on Monday from the Trump administration. The administration's letter highlighted the program's potential to "provide state and local agencies a robust and efficient tool to verify citizenship or immigration status." The rejection comes about a month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings that had found the SAVE database violated Americans' privacy rights.

Secretary Aguilar stated in a text message on Tuesday that Nevada remains uninterested in using the SAVE tool, citing its tendency to produce a high number of incorrect identifications. This concern stems from documented instances where the program has mistakenly identified American citizens as non-citizens.

The SAVE program has indeed produced errors in other states. For example, in Missouri, the tool reportedly misidentified hundreds of U.S. voters as non-citizens. Similarly, in Texas, at least 87 errors were observed across 29 counties, according to reports from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

While the Trump administration's letter indicated that states should take additional steps to confirm information before canceling voter registrations when the system flags a possible non-citizen, some states, such as Missouri, have proceeded based on the tool's findings without further verification.

The federal SAVE system was originally created to assist government agencies in preventing the allocation of government benefits to non-U.S. citizens. However, the Trump administration restructured the system to focus on detecting potential non-citizen voters, allowing state election officials to upload voter records in bulk and query the database using the last four digits of a person’s Social Security number. States can now also utilize the database without cost. The renewed program faced legal challenges; a federal judge blocked it in June, ruling that the government had significantly infringed upon Americans' privacy rights and could jeopardize their voting eligibility. An appeals court upheld this ruling, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed it last month.

Agencies in more than half of U.S. states are currently participating in the SAVE program, with many overseen by Republican officials. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported that at least seven of these entities have publicly confirmed verifying their voter lists using the system, which resulted in approximately 0.01 percent of voters being flagged as suspected non-citizens. The Trump administration has claimed that more than 15,000 non-citizens might be present on Nevada's voter rolls.

Nearly a month after making that claim, the federal administration stated it had identified about 185 potential non-citizens registered to vote. However, state officials in Nevada later reported that their review of these specific voters revealed they were likely all citizens.

Under Nevada law, individuals are required to affirm their U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. Voting by non-U.S. citizens is illegal under both state and federal statutes. In a related development, federal prosecutors in Nevada recently filed charges against a southern Nevada woman for allegedly voting illegally in the 2024 elections.