Virtually all available evidence shows that, overwhelmingly, only eligible citizens are voting in U.S. elections. But fueled by conspiracy theories, some recent state and federal actions—such as the viciously anti-voter SAVE America Act—have gone too far in aggressively pursuing unreliable citizenship checks for registered voters. These recent policies often involve checking voters’ information against government databases that are incomplete or out of date and demanding voters incorrectly flagged as noncitizens show papers, such as a birth certificate, a passport, or a naturalization certificate, in order to stay registered to vote. This can cause real hardship and harm to eligible voters, especially naturalized and derived citizens, by wrongly labeling them as noncitizens and preventing them from exercising their constitutional right to vote.
Citizenship checks often involve state election officials forcing voters to prove their citizenship status to avoid removal from voter rolls, including by requiring documentary proof of citizenship to stay registered. But millions of American citizens do not have or cannot access documents such as a birth certificate or passport, and many eligible voters lack required documents with their current legal name, including many married women who have changed their names. These checks also disproportionately impact naturalized and derived citizens, whose information—unlike that of U.S.-born citizens—has changed, but may not be up to date in a government database used for such checks.
Ensuring voter rolls stay accurate and updated is an important job of election administrators. But if these efforts are based on flawed assumptions, stale data, and careless methods, they can and will go awry, resulting in the improper removal of eligible voters—especially when these efforts are driven by bad-faith actors looking to deliberately prevent voting among targeted groups.
Through our lawsuits, research, and advocacy, Fair Elections Center has led national efforts to ensure that voter list maintenance activities are accurate, transparent, and do not take away the fundamental right to vote from eligible Americans.
Filed major lawsuits to block discriminatory laws.
Investigated the risks of using old government data to question voter eligibility.
Published research that is shaping how the public and policymakers understand this issue.
Submitted public comments and policy recommendations to oppose unnecessary documentary proof of citizenship and related unreliable citizenship checks.
Lawyers from Fair Elections Center and other plaintiff legal teams in the consolidated litigation against HB 2492 and HB 2243 in Arizona.
Case: Mi Familia Vota v. Fontes (2022 to 2024)
Fair Elections Center challenged an Arizona law that unfairly targeted naturalized citizens by requiring county election officials to investigate the citizenship of any registered voter they suspected was not a U.S. citizen. The law relied upon a vague “reason to believe” standard and commanded officials to search the SAVE system (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system), which only contained information on naturalized citizens. In a decision that was upheld unanimously (3-0) on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the court struck down the specific part of the law that Fair Elections Center challenged. This result helped protect thousands of eligible voters.
Additionally, during the course of this case, Fair Elections Center obtained a letter from the Social Security Administration, which confirmed that SSA data are not reliable for checking citizenship. This letter is now widely cited by voting rights groups and shows why using old citizenship status data to question voter eligibility today does not produce accurate results.
In July 2025, Fair Elections Center published a detailed report on the federal government’s changes to the SAVE system, a data system which is used to check citizenship and immigration status and is administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) via U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Our report explained how DHS overhauled the SAVE system to begin accessing data from the Social Security Administration that are often out of date and inaccurate, and to conduct checks in bulk so that many more voters are targeted by these checks. This could lead to thousands of eligible voters being wrongly flagged as noncitizens.
The report has been used by journalists, election officials, and advocacy groups to explain the risks of faulty citizenship checks.
Read the Report
Fair Elections Center joined CREW, Democracy Forward, and EPIC in suing the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration over its creation of large national data systems that combine personal data from different federal agencies. In violation of federal law, DHS and SSA overhauled the SAVE system to incorporate unreliable SSA citizenship data. Unless the court reverses these changes, this unlawful consolidation of Americans’ sensitive information will lead to more sweeping and more inaccurate citizenship checks of registered voters.
Citizenship check policies are often based on flawed data and create unnecessary barriers to voting. Rather than make our elections safer, they instead stop eligible citizens from voting, particularly naturalized voters, meaning that their voices are not included in choosing our leaders.
Our work ensures that: