The midterms are going to be a data security nightmare

One messy database is threatening to disenfranchise thousands or even millions of registered voters, while leaving even more at risk of intimidation or data breaches, in the name of solving a problem that barely exists.

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, election and privacy experts are sounding alarms about the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program, which President Donald Trump’s administration has expanded to ostensibly catch noncitizens voting. Experts say that amounts to a dangerous, error-prone effort to centralize voter data. “The federal government doesn’t have the authority to do any of that and doesn’t have the expertise either,” says Eileen O’Connor, senior counsel at the Brennan Center. “Inserting themselves into the day-to-day functioning of state elections is unprecedented and disturbing.”

The SAVE program, created in 1987 to verify public benefit eligibility, queries federal databases to determine residents’ immigration status. Last year, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) began demanding nearly every state provide complete voter information to cross-reference against the program, then purge any voters the agency deems ineligible within 45 days. These state rolls can include reams of sensitive information, including social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and in some cases, voter participation history.

DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre told The Verge that the agency has authority under laws like the National Voter Registration Act to “ensure that states have proper voter registration procedures and programs to maintain clean voter rolls containing only eligible voters in federal elections.” Those challenging it say the agency is going far beyond its authority. But while some states have successfully fought the order, 16 have agreed to hand over full voter registration lists, according to the Brennan Center, and two — Texas and Alaska — agreed to implement the purge.

In October of 2025, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said an audit of over 18 million against SAVE data had identified 2,724 registered “potential noncitizens.” The state told local counties to further investigate the discrepancies and refer those they confirmed to be noncitizens to the state attorney general.

But SAVE is an unreliable indicator of citizenship. Among other places, it pulls from the Social Security Administration (SSA), which acknowledges that its information is only a “snapshot in time,” that can give “an indication of citizenship,” rather than “definitive information.” Recently naturalized citizens — who can legally draw benefits or register to vote — may not be recognized by this snapshot. DHS itself acknowledges that users of the program must verify any output besides “United States Citizen.”

Multiple studies as well as state investigations have found that extraordinarily few noncitizens vote in US elections. A 2014 analysis published in The Washington Post, for example, found 31 credible instances of voter impersonation out of a billion cast ballots since 2000.

Nelson claims that “The Trump Administration’s decision to give states free and direct access to this data set for the first time has been a game changer,” but many elections and privacy experts say that’s not a good thing. States have always been in charge of administering elections, and have the processes in place to do so. Demands for unredacted voter files only exert undue control over elections and subject voters to increased privacy risks, they say.

“The administration has proceeded in the face of that known risk, some might say by design, rather than just out of negligence,” says John Davisson, deputy director and director of enforcement at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which has sued to block the expansion of SAVE. “And it’s resulting in people losing the right to vote.”

The risk is not hypothetical. Outlets including NPR and The Texas Tribune have identified US citizens erroneously flagged via SAVE. “If people feel that they’re going to be potentially subject to prosecution and investigation, despite the fact that they’re legally entitled to vote, it will tend to drive down registration rates,” Davisson says. “It will tend to create a culture of fear that limits democratic participation.” It’s also part of a larger pattern of potential intimidation: Trump has floated sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the National Guard to polling stations to ensure “honest elections,” even though armed federal agents are generally barred from deploying there.

O’Connor, who previously worked at the voting section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division, says the agency would rarely ask states to produce complete voter rolls before Trump. When they did, it was typically for a court case or specific investigation. “This is just a vacuuming effort,” she says.

This is just the latest Trump administration effort to centralize agency data. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), for example, attempted to build a massive database combining information on individuals across multiple agencies, eschewing typical data security protections, The Washington Post reported.

While you might think that the government already has tons of information on you, there’s still plenty of data that only states maintain, like driver’s license numbers and voting history. The Census Bureau goes to great lengths to assure residents that it protects their privacy, because failing to do so could jeopardize the entire project of counting up the population (Trump has arguably compromised this, pushing to change the Census to identify and exclude undocumented immigrants). The Privacy Act of 1974 also limits how federal agencies can share information with one another.

Amassing voter information, O’Connor says, is a way some Republicans “are now laying the groundwork to be able to call into question the results of future elections, should they not go the way that they want them to go.” Recently a Florida US Attorney’s Office brought on Kurt Olsen, a 2020 election denier, as a senior attorney.

Large collections of personal information can also be attractive targets for hackers. The infamous 2015 breach of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) exposed sensitive information on over 22 million people, including federal employees, contractors, and their friends and families, which is partly why experts were concerned about DOGE’s data consolidation efforts. EPIC found the DOJ’s promised safeguards for voter rolls are “littered with ambiguous security promises and empty recitations.”

The Trump administration likely won’t be able to actually create the unified voting list of its dreams, but it could still have costs. Davisson points to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order demanding the Postal Service withhold mail-in ballots to homes unless states submit their voter rolls to the feds. “They’re trying to prevent those people from being able to vote by mail, which is a critical means of exercising the right to vote in this day and age,” he says. “And they’re doing that through the exploitation of personal information through the creation of these lists.”

State and local officials are supposed to have final say over their voter rolls, and citizens may get the chance to correct the record — Davisson suggests checking in advance with local election officials. But they could also easily miss a notice and be disenfranchised, or fear they’ll get in trouble for pushing back. “The system should be working to ensure their fundamental right to vote,” Davisson says. “So it is disgraceful that this is a problem that individuals have to worry about now.”