Nevada won't use federal SAVE citizenship database for voter rolls, citing false positives

What happened

Nevada will not take part in a federal program designed to identify noncitizens on voter rolls, The Nevada Independent reported. Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, confirmed the decision on Tuesday, turning down a request from the Trump administration.

The program is called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. According to The Nevada Independent, Aguilar's office received a letter Monday asking the state to join the voluntary program. In a text message, Aguilar said Nevada is not interested because the tool produces "too many false positives."

What SAVE is and how it changed

Its original purpose

SAVE was first built so the federal government could help agencies keep government benefits from going to noncitizens, The Nevada Independent reported. The administration's letter to Nevada described it as a way to give state and local agencies "a robust and efficient tool to verify citizenship or immigration status."

The overhaul

The Trump administration reworked the system as part of its effort to find potential noncitizen voters. State election officials can now upload voter registration records in bulk and search the database using the last four digits of a Social Security number. States can also use it at no cost, according to the outlet.

Concerns about errors

Missouri and Texas

Reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, cited by The Nevada Independent, found the tool wrongly identified hundreds of American voters as noncitizens in Missouri. In Texas, there were at least 87 errors across 29 counties.

The administration's letter said that when SAVE flags a voter, states must take extra steps to confirm the result before canceling a registration. But some states, including Missouri, have acted on the findings without further checks, The Nevada Independent reported.

Results in other states

Agencies in more than half of states are using the program, many of them run by Republicans. At least seven of those states have publicly shared results from running their voter rolls through SAVE, and about 0.01 percent of voters were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

The court fight

A federal judge blocked the revamped program in June, ruling the government "knowingly trampled" on Americans' privacy rights in a way that could put their voting eligibility at risk. An appeals court upheld that ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed it last month, and Aguilar's decision came about a month after that reversal, The Nevada Independent reported.

Nevada's history with the issue

The Trump administration earlier claimed 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. State officials later said their review found those voters were all likely citizens, according to The Nevada Independent.

In Nevada, people must affirm they are citizens when they register, and noncitizen voting is illegal under both state and federal law. Last week, federal prosecutors in Nevada charged a Southern Nevada woman with illegally voting in the 2024 election, the outlet reported. For more on how voting is going this fall, see our coverage of early and mail voting in Clark County and our elections section.

What to watch next

• The federal case against a Southern Nevada woman charged last week with illegally voting in the 2024 election.
• Whether the Trump administration presses further after Nevada declined Monday's request to join the voluntary SAVE program.
• Additional public results from the more than half of states using SAVE, after at least seven reported about 0.01 percent of voters flagged.