Texas Used a Disputed Federal Tool to Flag 2,000 Voters
Texas used the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database to flag more than 2,000 people on the state voter roll as potential noncitizens. Then, in April, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson wrote to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services questioning whether the tool was producing accurate results.
In that letter, obtained by Democracy Forward through a public records request and shared with Votebeat, Nelson asked USCIS officials to notify her office if they could “confirm the citizenship of any individuals previously identified as non-citizens” in the SAVE system. The request was a signal that Texas had flagged people the state could not itself verify were actually ineligible.
USCIS never responded, according to Nelson’s spokesperson.
The Federal Tool States Are Using Has a Documented Accuracy Problem
The Trump administration overhauled SAVE in 2025, making it free for states and easier to search. It has since pushed election officials across the country to use it for voter roll checks. Texas was among the first states to adopt the expanded program.
The problem is that election officials in multiple states have reported that SAVE incorrectly flagged U.S. citizens. When a citizen is wrongly marked as a potential noncitizen, they can face removal from the voter roll or demands to prove eligibility before casting a ballot.
“Texas’s use of DHS’s illegally-expanded SAVE system has always raised significant risks of voter disenfranchisement, given that system’s known inaccuracies.”
Democracy Forward, statement on the Nelson letter, 2026
Nelson wrote to federal officials precisely because those inaccuracies were not theoretical. Her office had flagged more than 2,000 people and could not confirm, on its own, whether any of them were actually ineligible.
Texas Has No Election Chief Starting July 17
Nelson resigned last month. Her last day is July 17, 2026. As of this brief’s publication, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has not named a replacement. That means the office overseeing these voter roll checks will be without a confirmed leader at the same moment the accuracy questions Nelson raised remain unanswered.
Any purge actions based on SAVE data affect real voters. Citizens flagged by the system may receive notice that their eligibility is in question. Without a response from USCIS and without a confirmed Secretary of State in Texas, there is no clear path for resolving errors before the next election cycle.
What You Can Do Now
-
Call Governor Abbott’s office at (512) 463-2000 and demand he appoint a Texas Secretary of State who will publicly release the list of voters flagged by SAVE and pause any removals until USCIS responds to Nelson’s accuracy questions.
-
Call your U.S. senators at (202) 224-3121 and ask them to demand a Senate oversight hearing on SAVE’s accuracy. Senators on the Judiciary Committee have jurisdiction over USCIS. Tell them USCIS ignored a state election chief’s formal letter and that the record needs to be public.
-
File your own public records request with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. Request all correspondence between the SoS and USCIS regarding SAVE, plus the full list of flagged voter records. Texas open records law (Government Code Chapter 552) gives you this right. Submit requests at sos.texas.gov or mail to the Office of the Secretary of State, P.O. Box 12697, Austin, TX 78711.
-
Contact Democracy Forward at democracyforward.org to report if you or someone you know received a voter eligibility challenge in Texas. They are actively tracking SAVE-related disenfranchisement and have already used litigation and records requests to surface these documents.
Sources
Texas Tribune: Texas Election Chief Raised Concerns About Federal Noncitizen-Flagging Tool Votebeat: SAVE System Used by States to Check Voter Roll Citizenship Democracy Forward: SAVE System Legal Challenges and FOIA Disclosures Brennan Center for Justice: Voter Purge Risks and Noncitizen Flagging Tools KFF: Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program Overview