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The US Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to use a controversial voter verification system just weeks before the November midterm elections, according to Al Jazeera and The Associated Press.
The court’s emergency order on Friday permits the Department of Homeland Security to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, known as SAVE, to help verify the eligibility of voters listed on state voter rolls.
Voting rights groups raise concerns
Voting rights organisations have argued that the system, revamped under the Trump administration in 2025, could incorrectly identify voters as non-citizens and result in their wrongful removal from voter rolls.
Critics have also questioned the accuracy of citizenship information in the database, saying it may be out of date. An election official in Travis County, Texas, found that as many as 25% of people identified by the system as “non-citizens” were actually US citizens.
States oversee election administration under the US Constitution and are not required to use SAVE. However, several Republican-led states have voluntarily chosen to use the database.
Order is not the court’s final ruling
It was not immediately clear whether the decision would have a significant effect on the midterm elections scheduled for November 3, when voters will decide which party controls the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Existing law generally prevents most states from systematically removing voters from their rolls within 90 days of an election. Friday’s emergency order does not resolve the broader legal dispute; it allows the administration to use the system until the court issues a final ruling.
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, who dissented, said the majority had disregarded “the harms that the modified SAVE system has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters”.
The watchdog group Citizens for Ethics said the decision “puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the admin’s unreliable voter purge system weeks before the midterms”.
Trump’s focus on election administration
Trump has made election administration a central issue ahead of the midterm vote, which could provide a major check on his authority during the final two years of his term.
He has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that US elections are affected by widespread fraud and has falsely said that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, was “stolen”. Evidence indicates that election fraud of any kind, including voting by non-citizens, is extremely rare in the United States.
In September, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s bid to restrict mail-in voting procedures before the midterm elections.
