Trump Asks Supreme Court To Let Database Decide Who Is American
President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court this week to revive his expanded federal voter-citizenship database, arguing that democracy works best when Social Security files, immigration records and voter rolls are poured into one enormous government spreadsheet and treated as more American than the Americans listed in it. Lower courts blocked the modified Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system after finding that it unlawfully combined sensitive information and could misidentify eligible citizens. The administration said those defects are essential safeguards, because a database can challenge a person’s citizenship without being distracted by evidence, context or the burden of pronouncing a surname.
“We have the greatest database, extremely accurate, and if it says you’re not a citizen, maybe you should listen because computers know tremendous things,” Trump said. “They probably know more about citizenship than the citizens do, frankly, and innocent people will be very happy to prove the computer wrong as many times as necessary.” Under the administration’s plan, states could conduct bulk searches of voter rolls using Social Security data and flag Americans exhibiting established indicators of foreign infiltration, including naturalization, clerical discrepancies, hyphenated names, multiple addresses or the reckless decision to share a birthday with another person.
Administration officials stressed that the system would not automatically remove anyone from the rolls. It would instead place selected citizens in the more democratic position of defending their constitutional rights against an interagency data product assembled from records the government concedes may be incomplete. Voters could then demonstrate their eligibility by supplying documents, contacting election officials, correcting federal errors and remaining alive long enough to receive a response. Officials described the process as a light administrative touch intended to ensure that voting remains accessible to everyone who can successfully appeal the government’s guess about them.
The Justice Department called the lower-court injunction a threat to election integrity, noting that public confidence collapses whenever registered voters remain registered without first defeating the federal government in an administrative escape room. The Supreme Court must now determine whether citizenship is a legal status protected by the Constitution or a recurring pop quiz graded by software designed to presume the answer wrong. Under the administration’s election-security standard, Americans become citizens only after a federal database fails to prove otherwise.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.