New issue brief from the Fair Elections Center:

Changes fueled by election-denier conspiracy theories are in the works for a system created by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) nearly forty years ago to verify citizenship status and legal presence in the United States. DHS recently announced major modifications to its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, or SAVE, for the state and local election agencies that use it in the voting context (not to be confused with the anti-voter SAVE Act which is pending in Congress and fueled by the same conspiracy theories ). Most significantly, state and local agencies can now query the system using Social Security numbers and submit queries in bulk uploads. Though technical in nature, these changes may impact voters across the country, especially as more states sign up to use the retooled system.

The SAVE system is administered by DHS via U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”). Originally created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and then expanded by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, the SAVE system is used to verify or determine citizenship in response to inquiries from federal, state, and local officials, usually related to applications for public benefits. In recent years, state and local election officials in certain states have used SAVE to verify the citizenship of voter registrants and currently registered voters who provide a DHS-issued immigration identifier. User agencies sign a memorandum of agreement (“MOA”) with USCIS and, in the past, were charged a fee for each case they submitted to SAVE. Prior to the Trump administration, ten states had MOAs to use SAVE for voter registration and/or list maintenance purposes: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia….