Judge blocks use of federal database to check citizenship, saying it could wrongly purge voters

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that a revamped federal tool that state election officials have used in their efforts to identify illegally registered noncitizen voters is unlawful and cannot be used. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan on Monday (June 22, 2026) sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls. The tool has been around for decades and was recently upgraded. But some election officials have raised concerns about its accuracy and security.