Trump’s online voter registration plan stirs legal and privacy fears

The Trump administration’s proposal to create a federal online voter registration form is drawing sharp opposition from state election officials and privacy advocates who say it risks violating state law, confusing voters, and expanding the federal government’s reach into election administration.

The administration says the project will improve access and verification, but its timing less than a year before the 2026 mid-term elections, which could see unprecedented voter turnout and a possible overturning of Republican control of Congress, makes many officials uneasy. Even minor glitches could delay or block registrations in key battleground states.

For decades, states have resisted national voter databases, citing both sovereignty and privacy. But the Trump administration’s consolidation of identity systems signals a push toward centralized data control under the banner of election integrity.

For the first time, the plan would allow voters to complete the federal mail-in voter registration form electronically through a federal portal that verifies identity and checks citizenship through the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. The system would then transmit the completed applications to state election offices.

Legal scholars and critics warn that treating SAVE or other federal databases as conclusive proof of citizenship ignores known data gaps and could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.

The effort, which was discussed in October calls between the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and state election officials, is being promoted as a modernization measure.

Participants in those calls said the developers have offered few details about how the system would align with state laws or safeguard voter data and have shown little understanding of state-level election processes.

Meeting notes from an October 17 call with the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) obtained by Votebeat show members “representing states of both parties expressed serious concerns with this project not complying with state law” and that “the developers do not seem to want to spend the time to understand election official concerns.”

Leslie Reynolds, executive director of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said during an October 23 call that only a small share of voters use the federal form today but warned that “if this goes awry, that could be a big deal.”

Officials from both Republican and Democratic states pressed the EAC to clarify how the online system would interact with their own voter registration frameworks, which often rely on state-issued IDs, “wet” signatures, or in-state digital credentials.

Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, states must accept the federal mail form as they would their own registration forms, but voters submit it directly to state election offices.

The online proposal would have applicants submit information first through a federal portal that performs identity and citizenship checks before transmitting data to the states.

That change has raised legal concerns. Michelle Tassinari, Massachusetts’ elections counsel, told the October 17 meeting that “the voter is no longer submitting an application to the state, which is what the NVRA allows them to do.”

Tassinari later confirmed that the plan would effectively require states to retrieve applications from the EAC rather than receive them directly.

EAC General Counsel Camden Kelliher said the paper form would remain available and that the online tool would only provide an additional option.

Executive Director Brianna Schletz added that the agency “is not trying to replace what the states are already doing,” but to make the federal form easier for those who use it.

Still, the concern among states is that the proposal blurs the legal boundary between federal and state control over registration, potentially requiring new legislation or rulemaking to stay within the NVRA’s limits.

Users of the digital form would verify their identity through a federal website, likely login.gov, by submitting a passport, driver’s license, state ID, or Social Security number. Federal officials said the information would be checked through DHS’s SAVE database before being sent to the state for processing.

But questions about what data would be stored, how long it would be retained, and who would have access remain unanswered. In recordings reviewed by Votebeat, federal developer Akash Bobba acknowledged that he “did not know what [SAVE administrators] retain and what they are logging,” promising only that “clear data retention policies” would be provided before launch.

That uncertainty has alarmed privacy advocates, who pointed out that SAVE was designed for immigration-benefit verification, not voter registration. The Electronic Privacy Information Center warned that using SAVE for voter checks “upends the expectations of the public and the people who are submitting to verification against this database,” and called it a potential Privacy Act violation.

The Privacy Act of 1974 requires agencies to publish a public notice when they create or modify systems that collect personally identifiable information.

As of late October, DHS had not issued a notice for the SAVE changes, prompting senators Alex Padilla, Gary Peters, and Jeff Merkley to demand documentation explaining how DHS uses state-uploaded voter data.

While the online form remains under discussion, some states have already begun using the revamped SAVE system to verify voter citizenship. Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama are among the early adopters.

Texas officials have praised the tool as a safeguard against non-citizen voting, though past audits found that many flagged voters were naturalized citizens.

According to public records obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared with Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office used SAVE this spring to check at least 1,657 records.

Nearly 300 searches returned errors, which the office attributed to duplicates or formatting issues.

In June, Texas officials announced they had referred 33 potential non-citizens for investigation out of more than 11 million voters statewide. Alicia Pierce, spokesperson for the Secretary of State, called SAVE “the most current and accurate database available to verify citizenship,” adding that access at no cost “is one of many data sets we use to ensure accurate voter rolls.”

But watchdogs warn that the system’s error rates and opaque procedures make it unreliable for election use. Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said “vague, watered-down safeguards create real risk for wrongful voter purges and disenfranchisement.”

A class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the League of Women Voters and several naturalized citizens accuses the Trump administration of quietly merging data from DHS, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice, and other agencies into a “single U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Data Lake” without following Privacy Act or E-Government Act procedures.

The suit argues that DHS unlawfully expanded SAVE beyond its statutory purpose by allowing agencies to run bulk queries on U.S.-born citizens using Social Security numbers, linking databases that Congress never authorized to be connected.

Plaintiffs say the changes could lead to naturalized or native-born citizens being flagged as non-citizens and stripped from voter rolls.

The complaint also names the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as playing a central role in building the interagency data systems. Congressional investigations and whistleblower reports have described DOGE staff accessing Social Security and DHS servers without standard privacy reviews or impact assessments.

For critics, the proposed online form and SAVE expansion fit into a pattern of federal overreach under Trump’s second-term election agenda. Earlier this year, the Justice Department sued several states to obtain detailed voter-roll data and the White House pressed agencies to coordinate identity verification across departments.

Opponents see these moves as an attempt to centralize voter-data control in Washington, undermining the constitutional balance that leaves election administration primarily to the states.

If the federal portal is launched without full state integration, voters in the six states that are not required to accept the federal form – Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming – would have to be redirected to state registration systems. Federal officials have acknowledged that not all states will participate initially.

Article Topics

elections  |  identity management  |  national ID  |  U.S. Government  |  United States  |  voter registration