this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system.

The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.

NPR is the first news organization to report the details of the new system.

For decades, voting officials have noted that there was no national citizenship list to compare their state lists to, so to verify citizenship for their voters, they either needed to ask people to provide a birth certificate or a passport — something that could disenfranchise millions — or use a complex patchwork of disparate data sources.

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[–] Snowies@lemmy.zip 19 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

Don’t you have to register to vote?…

Illegal immigrants don’t even have social security numbers…

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 1 hour ago

they want to see whos voting Dems, or independant(that isnt aligned with the gop to siphon votes from the DEMS)

[–] smayonak@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

They are promoting the disproven conspiracy theory that illegals are impersonating US citizens and then casting ballots under false names.

Greg Palast's reporting proved that they are trying to purge minority and left leaning voters from voting rolls.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I mean, you do, but... Often you just attest citizenship. Not sure if it's checked on the backend or not. And illegal immigrants often have SSNs, just not their own. That's how they can work much of the time.

Not that I expect many non-citizens are voting. The risk to reward ratio makes it really unattractive. Even citizens struggle to bother.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago

Are the illegals voting in elections in the room with us right now?

[–] olympicyes@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There was talk of establishing a national ID in the 90s but republicans revolted saying it would be the number of the beast. I guess their principles on the matter depend on whether the beast in question is Trump or Clinton. There would definitely be scope creep for such an ID, much like the SSN. I say just make it a national ID and eliminate the need to register to vote.

[–] nomy@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago

They were against the Beast because they didn't know they'd agree with his policies.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 19 points 1 day ago

look at which ones are voting democrats are voting independant, and target those areas for voter suppression, its simple as that.

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 day ago

Given that US citizens are getting immigration court notices and even getting deported, I’m sure this is a very accurate and trustworthy system.

We are in the dumbest timeline.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 10 points 1 day ago

Nothing dystopian about this, nope. JFC what an awful time to exist in.

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Why this is unneeded

Citizenship is already required to vote in state and federal elections. Every state currently maintains its own voter rolls. These voter rolls are administered at the state level and how citizenship is proved occurs according to state laws.

Why this is bad

This database represents a breach of state autonomy to administer their elections.
Some localities do not require citizenship to vote. This database could disenfranchise voters in those localities.
This represents a huge target for hackers, and given that every municipality will have access to it, there are a lot of potential ways in which it could be compromised or manipulated. The federal government is rife with inaccurate information, and is often understaffed to address the issue. These issues can and will disenfranchise voters. States and municipalities are better equipped to handle their voter rolls.

How this will be abused

This database will be used to both verify citizenship, and for election officials to upload who is registered to vote in a given electoral area. This will lead to its usage to disqualify people who are registered in multiple areas. If - 31 days before an election, someone uploads a list of conservative or liberal voters from a purple area such as Florida or Ohio to the rolls of another state using hacked credentials, then it’s very possible those people will be disqualified from voting and may not know until they try to cast their ballot - shifting the balance of the election.
With the Supreme Court recently discarding birthright citizenship without clarifying who qualifies for citizenship, a sufficiently malicious actor could ensnarl the electoral and legal system with arbitrary claims that people’s parents were not U.S. citizens.
Invariably, the data from this will be used to stalk hapless people — either by electoral workers, or by anyone, once it has been hacked.
And, speculatively - what happens if the scope of this morphs to a ‘voter eligibility’ database, where it tries to ascertain if someone is eligible to vote on additional criterion, such as criminal history? Will it be plagued with errors, such as not registering expunged records, or applying one state’s laws to another?

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Citizenship is already required to vote in state [...] elections.

This is incorrect. The law you think you're referencing by this is only applicable to Federal positions. Several states explicitly allow non-citizen voting in local elections. Many have no laws on the books at all addressing it. Only 15 states explicitly prohibit non-citizen voting for local positions.

https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_permitting_noncitizens_to_vote_in_the_United_States

This fact alone should mandate that the federal level maintains their own registrations. The State and Federal levels have different applicable voter rolls because the state doesn't have the same requirements as the federal elections.

Edit: Wrong word.

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Does an independent civillian organization maintain this list? Or is the servers gonna be located at trump tower and orange fuckface just deleted anyone with dark skin tone. from the "citizen" list?

(Rhetorical question, we all know the real answer lol)

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I see nothing wrong with making sure people who vote are citizens, what I object to is kicking actual citizens off the voting roles because they're not Republicans.

[–] SuperCub@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with this proposal, however, if we know one thing about this regime, it's that they will use anything as a political tool for their advantage. So, it's very likely that Trump uses this project as an avenue to revoke the citizenship of his perceived political enemies. It's probably a good idea to get a passport issued before this gets started so it's at least a little bit harder for them to claim you aren't a citizen.

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[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 82 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Is it built on top of a Palantir database?

My money's on it

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago

no no, it's an input to a Palantir database

[–] Mvlad88@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (23 children)

Person from outside the US here. Please explain me why this is a problem?

In the EU only citizens can vote in national elections, for local elections non-citizens can vote only if they are residents.

[–] warbond@lemmy.world 73 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think in most cases where this administration seems to have a good idea it's important to remember that it's likely designed to keep them in power.

A national database that the trump admin controls will 100% be exploited for their own gain, just like every other aspect of government is being exploited for their gain now.

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[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 52 points 1 day ago

You already can’t vote if you’re not a citizen. There are voter rolls and you get checked off when you go vote.

This almost certainly will be used to deport people without going through due process.

[–] voracitude@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago (13 children)

What happens if someone is illegitimately removed from this database? How can you show whether it was a glitch, or deliberate? How do you know if the information they have about you is even right, or get it changed if you need to? Where's the accountability?

See the UK Post Office accounting scandal, in which a persistent computer error went unfixed for decades and caused hundreds of post office employees to be fired and dragged through courts for corruption that never happened. A good chunk of them committed suicide. The government and the software company both knew about the bug causing the issue, too, but prosecutions continued. "If the computer says it, it must be right", sort of danger.

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[–] PTSDwarrior@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 day ago

Because they want to use the data for more nefarious purposes to displace non-white American voters.

[–] voytrekk@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The US is generally the same where some local elections allow non-citizen residents to vote for local issues.

The issue with this is was not created publicly. We don't know what kind of data is being uses to determine someone's status. If someone is private enough to not have any data collected by its source, then they could be denied voting rights despite being legally able to vote.

It also could end up bring used as the sole source for verifying someone's status, despite having documents to prove otherwise.

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[–] KingCake_Baby@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago

There is no evidence of voter fraud from people who actually vote. This is blatant government overreach to secure illegitimate votes, "if they're in the system, then they can vote."

This system will only lead to inflation of "bot" or fake identities to inflate voter numbers for any particular candidate polling.

[–] Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So if you vote against him, you lose citizenship and he gets 100% of the votes?

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Where I live we have something called the electoral roll, which is a nationwide database of registered voters.

It's weird the states don't also have this already.

[–] Tinidril@midwest.social 20 points 1 day ago

Don't make the mistake of thinking this is a legitimate implementation of such a system. It will absolutely be intentionally flawed in ways that allow the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans citizens. That's 100% what always happens with Republican initiatives to "protect" elections. It will be made trivial to "accidentally" remove legitimate voter registrations, and a labyrinthian bureaucratic process to correct them.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm fairly sure we already do, but they are administered state by state, and not centralized.

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