The Trump administration has run at least 67 million voter registrations through a U.S. Department of Homeland Security verification system, flagging tens of thousands as potential noncitizens or deceased less than six months before the November midterms, the Associated Press reported Friday. The same day, Maryland's elections administrator confirmed a vendor had sent the wrong party's primary ballot to part of a roughly 400,000-voter mail-in batch, prompting state Republicans to demand a federal audit.
The developments mark an escalation of the fight over voter-list maintenance in a closely divided election year. Democratic state officials are suing to stop the federal checks. Republicans and the Republican National Committee are pushing to widen them, and a ballot mistake in a Democratic-run state has handed them fresh ammunition.
The federal program
The checks run through SAVE, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, a database built to keep noncitizens off federal benefit rolls. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said at least 25 states have used SAVE on voter rolls since April 2025, when the administration expanded its search capabilities, and that 60 million registrations were checked in a year. North Carolina, where Republicans control the state election board, added 7.4 million more.
The agency said the checks identified about 24,000 potential noncitizens. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told Fox News the same checks turned up roughly 350,000 people who appear to have died. The figures amount to a fraction of 1 percent of registrations reviewed.
Anthony Nel, a 29-year-old college administrator in Denton, Texas, was flagged after the state ran its 18 million registrations through SAVE. Nel came from South Africa at age 8 and became a citizen at 16 with his parents. His local office canceled his registration last fall while he awaited a new passport. He is now a plaintiff in one of at least six federal lawsuits over the program.
"If a voter is wrongly removed, by the time they learn about it and correct it, they may miss their opportunity to vote in that election," said Freda Levenson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which is challenging an Ohio law requiring monthly DHS checks.
Maryland's mix-up
Maryland State Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis said Friday the state would resend replacement ballots by May 29 and was working to "eliminate any doubt in its integrity or accuracy" of the mail-in process. Vendor Taylor Print & Visual Impressions acknowledged the error.
Maryland's conservative Freedom Caucus said the mistake justified turning the voter file over to federal auditors. "With 400,000 double ballots in circulation, we need to be absolutely sure that there is one vote, one person" before the primary, the caucus wrote. The RNC sued Maryland in December over registration rates it called implausibly high.
The counterpoint
Republican officials say SAVE only flags registrations for further investigation and that voters can restore their status by showing proof of citizenship. Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who once played down noncitizen voting as a fraud threat, told a House committee SAVE is "one of the most important tools states have to verify voter information" for keeping rolls clean. Civil rights lawyers counter that some states cancel registrations on short deadlines and that outdated data has caught up naturalized citizens.
Maryland votes June 23.