Despite Trump admin request, Nevada won't use voter citizenship system amid fear of errors

Nevada election officials are declining to participate in a controversial federal program aimed at detecting noncitizen voters amid concerns that it erroneously flags eligible voters as noncitizens, rejecting a request from the Trump administration.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D) confirmed Tuesday that the state would not join the program, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements or SAVE. Aguilar's decision came one month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings that determined the database violates Americans' privacy rights.

The secretary of state's office also received a letter Monday where the Trump administration requested that Nevada participate in the voluntary program. The letter said the program can "provide state and local agencies with a robust and efficient tool to verify citizenship or immigration status."

However, the program has led to errors. In Missouri, the tool mistakenly identified hundreds of American voters as noncitizens, and in Texas, there were at least 87 errors across 29 counties, according to reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

The Trump administration's letter noted that when the system flags a voter as a potential noncitizen, states must take additional steps to confirm the information is accurate before canceling their voter registration. However, some states, such as Missouri, have acted on the tool's findings without further verification.

Aguilar said in a text message Tuesday that Nevada remains uninterested in using the tool because it has "too many false positives."

In Nevada, voters must affirm they are a citizen when they register to vote. Noncitizen voting is illegal under state and federal laws.

The system was originally created so that the federal government could help agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. But the Trump administration has overhauled the system as part of its efforts to root out potential noncitizen voters, allowing state election officials to upload voter registration records in bulk and search the database by the last four digits of a person's Social Security number. States can also now use the database free of charge.

A federal judge in June blocked the revamped program, ruling the government "knowingly trampled" on Americans' privacy rights that could jeopardize their eligibility to vote. An appeals court affirmed the ruling, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed it last month.

Agencies in more than half of states are participating in the program, many of which are run by Republicans. At least seven of these states have publicly reported the results of running their voter rolls through the system, which have resulted in about 0.01 percent of voters being flagged as potential noncitizens, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

The Trump administration had previously alleged that more than 15,000 noncitizens could be on Nevada's voter rolls. About a month later, it said it had identified about 185 potential noncitizens registered to vote, but state officials later said their review of these voters found they were all likely citizens.

Federal prosecutors in Nevada last week charged a Southern Nevada woman with illegally voting in the 2024 election.