The North Carolina State Board of Elections has approved a plan promoted by the Trump administration to check millions of voters for citizenship status.
The board’s Republican majority voted 3-2 to sign an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program — also known as SAVE.
The approval of the program at a scheduled board meeting Tuesday afternoon — first reported by The News & Observer — comes as federal immigration agents made more than 370 immigration arrests in North Carolina after a two-week long immigration enforcement operation in the state.
"I believe this is one of the best and few tools at our disposal," said Sam Hayes, the board's executive director.
The SAVE program has drawn criticism for using unreliable or outdated information in the past, which incorrectly identified some people as noncitizens.
The program was used by the State Board in 2017 for an audit, according to Adam Steele, an Associate General Counsel for the board.
Steele said "only a handful of voters" were previously identified as being noncitizens in the process, with at least one noncitizen reportedly not knowing how they ended up in the voter rolls.
Democratic board member Siobhan Millen pushed back against using the program, citing previous use of SAVE that yielded "false positives."
Millen cited the 2017 audit, which found that approximately three quarters of the people identified as noncitizens were actually citizens and were still identified as noncitizens even after providing proof of citizenship, she said.
"If this database was reliable, I would be fine with using it, but it seems like our experience with it is that it wasn't," said Millen. "It's just really not good enough data to take away someone's right to vote."
Board member Stacey Eggers retorted that there is due process for voters who file a complaint if they are mistakenly removed.
"I would encourage anyone eligible to vote, to vote," said Eggers. "But the other side of that is, if you allow those who are ineligible to vote, you have diluted and taken away the vote of those who are legitimate voters."
Voters' personal identifying information could be shared on a case-by-case basis with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — also known as ICE — and Customs and Border Protection, or Border Patrol, if the SAVE program indicates "potential fraud or misuse", according to a DHS report on the program.
A recording of the meeting can be watched on the State Board of Elections website.
