The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system.
The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.
NPR is the first news organization to report the details of the new system.
For decades, voting officials have noted that there was no national citizenship list to compare their state lists to, so to verify citizenship for their voters, they either needed to ask people to provide a birth certificate or a passport — something that could disenfranchise millions — or use a complex patchwork of disparate data sources.
Is it built on top of a Palantir database?
My money’s on it
no no, it’s an input to a Palantir database
Person from outside the US here. Please explain me why this is a problem?
In the EU only citizens can vote in national elections, for local elections non-citizens can vote only if they are residents.
I think in most cases where this administration seems to have a good idea it’s important to remember that it’s likely designed to keep them in power.
A national database that the trump admin controls will 100% be exploited for their own gain, just like every other aspect of government is being exploited for their gain now.
A national database that the trump admin controls
But if/when the Democrats win it will be under their “control”.
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A national database that the trump admin controls will 100% be exploited for their own gain
You mean, weaponized.
You already can’t vote if you’re not a citizen. There are voter rolls and you get checked off when you go vote.
This almost certainly will be used to deport people without going through due process.
Because they want to use the data for more nefarious purposes to displace non-white American voters.
The US is generally the same where some local elections allow non-citizen residents to vote for local issues.
The issue with this is was not created publicly. We don’t know what kind of data is being uses to determine someone’s status. If someone is private enough to not have any data collected by its source, then they could be denied voting rights despite being legally able to vote.
It also could end up bring used as the sole source for verifying someone’s status, despite having documents to prove otherwise.
I would imagine it’s based on social security numbers.
So it’s credit score based?
It’s not a problem. It’s fair to assume anything the Trump administration does is nefarious.
The ONLY People who Are WORRIED about This are STUPID LIBRULS trying to ILLEGALLY Vote! Everyone else is TOTALLY Fine with this because there’s NO WAY a Database like This can be Misused by a Government Deporting LEGAL CITIZENS and trying to Make GAY AND TRANS PEOPLE ILLEGAL!
Every region in the world has its way of doing things. When new layers of control are added, it makes some people nervous.
When the new controls are perhaps mismanaged and corrupt, promising to do more than advertised, it makes some people angry. Especially during an increase of lawlessness and corruption of the central government. Especially when it uses the same messaging which has already harmed many
With everything he does the issue is the implementation. Deport criminal aliens? I’m all for it, but most of the deportees have no criminal record or they accuse them of crimes as if it’s the same thing as a conviction.
Part of Trump’s grand plan is to make federal elections span only a single day. So maybe you check your status the day before and everything is fine, but the day of voting a glitch in the system says it can’t verify your citizenship. That’s it! No votes for you this year!
Part of Trump’s grand plan is to make federal elections span only a single day.
Don’t see the problem. For years in Italy elections were a one day only events (normally a Sunday) and everything worked fine.
So maybe you check your status the day before and everything is fine, but the day of voting a glitch in the system says it can’t verify your citizenship. That’s it! No votes for you this year!
There are solutions since the system need to be resilient, note that the glitch could be even not “wanted” so while you can think that $HATED_CANDIDATE want to keep his opponents away from the voting, in the same way $HATED_CANDIDATE want to make sure that his supporters can vote.
Deport criminal aliens? I’m all for it, but most of the deportees have no criminal record or they accuse them of crimes as if it’s the same thing as a conviction.
Illegal immigration is a crime.
Actually it’s a civil offense akin to a parking ticket which is separate from criminal charges.
It’s a crime.
The crime of wanting a better life and pulling your bootstrap that is.
Do it legally.
Is selling meth “wanting a better life and pulling your bootstrap”?
Is selling meth “wanting a better life and pulling your bootstrap”?
Technically, yes, because it leaves a lot of money. Funny way of saying you have never worked a slave-wage job in your life. But immigrants aren’t selling meth, though, because that would be a FEDERAL crime and not a CIVIL OFFENSE. Curious comparison to reach for immediately.
If they are selling method then simple police work is needed to catch them. No need for ICE. Be intellectually honest, you know selling meth isn’t really happening.
“Improper entry” through illegally crossing a border is a crime, but the majority of undocumented immigrants in the US don’t enter that way. “Unlawful presence” after a visa expires or is denied receives civil penalties rather than criminal, meaning they can’t lead to imprisonment but only fines or a court action like deportation.
but the majority of undocumented immigrants in the US don’t enter that way.
Doubt, especially given what we saw from 2021-early 2025.
You’re free to go look at the statistics easily found, I’m not gonna do your homework for you. Were you at the border?
Parking illegally is a crime, bub.
Not surprised a MAGAt can’t weigh not only the severity of the crime, but the motivations, its consequences, its long history, and overall social impact, and still decide they would rather lick boots instead. Good luck picking all that fruit in Texas and constructing those homes after a hurricane in Florida, though, champ. Send pics of your proud & hard work.
Also outside the US, and the “problem” is that people - pretty much exclusively democrat voters - want illegal immigrants to be able to vote, or at least don’t want their illegal votes to not be counted, because they overwhelmingly vote Democrat since the Democrats are the ones importing them and giving them freebies.
Your post is blatant disinformation. Undocumented immigrants overwhelmingly vote not at all. Voting illegally in the US is difficult, and often prosecuted.
I live in the US. Most of the people I know are Democrat-aligned. None of them want undocumented immigrants to vote. None of them import undocumented immigrants.
None of them want undocumented immigrants to vote.
Doubt.
And I’m here to believe that my MAGA Latino relatives living in the US are the exception to the rule? 😂 What about my extended family? And their friends and families? And theirs in turn?
What the Democrats want is to run local elections for local issues, and have the people affected vote because it affects them directly. Or what, did you get confused as usual and are talking about the general elections?
So you’re admitting the democrats want illegals to vote in elections?
Democrats? 😂 Buddy, this is a bipartisan event. If the city counsel decides what to do with the initiatives, why are you blaming the Dems? That the democrats are fine with that speaks to compassion for small issues that betters lives.
I hope you realize this doesn’t mean electing officials.
You literally said “what democrats want” in your last paragraph of your last post you turnip, and said that they want illegals to vote in them.
Yeah, what lower case democrats (and by extension capital D Democrats allegedly) want and believe in as a core tenet is for the public to vote on small scale measures that affect them directly. Shocker, I know. But tell me, did you think they meant elections instead of these issues? Because you’re glossing over the scale of these initiatives quite conveniently.
Also, should my country stop taking young people’s votes? Imagine children voting to give an opinion for the local council to hear! I may just clutch my pearls thinking they’re electing officials.
You need to look up the definition of the word “election” mate.
Why this is unneeded
Citizenship is already required to vote in state and federal elections. Every state currently maintains its own voter rolls. These voter rolls are administered at the state level and how citizenship is proved occurs according to state laws.
Why this is bad
This database represents a breach of state autonomy to administer their elections.
Some localities do not require citizenship to vote. This database could disenfranchise voters in those localities.
This represents a huge target for hackers, and given that every municipality will have access to it, there are a lot of potential ways in which it could be compromised or manipulated. The federal government is rife with inaccurate information, and is often understaffed to address the issue. These issues can and will disenfranchise voters. States and municipalities are better equipped to handle their voter rolls.How this will be abused
This database will be used to both verify citizenship, and for election officials to upload who is registered to vote in a given electoral area. This will lead to its usage to disqualify people who are registered in multiple areas. If - 31 days before an election, someone uploads a list of conservative or liberal voters from a purple area such as Florida or Ohio to the rolls of another state using hacked credentials, then it’s very possible those people will be disqualified from voting and may not know until they try to cast their ballot - shifting the balance of the election.
With the Supreme Court recently discarding birthright citizenship without clarifying who qualifies for citizenship, a sufficiently malicious actor could ensnarl the electoral and legal system with arbitrary claims that people’s parents were not U.S. citizens.
Invariably, the data from this will be used to stalk hapless people — either by electoral workers, or by anyone, once it has been hacked.
And, speculatively - what happens if the scope of this morphs to a ‘voter eligibility’ database, where it tries to ascertain if someone is eligible to vote on additional criterion, such as criminal history? Will it be plagued with errors, such as not registering expunged records, or applying one state’s laws to another?Citizenship is already required to vote in state […] elections.
This is incorrect. The law you think you’re referencing by this is only applicable to Federal positions. Several states explicitly allow non-citizen voting in local elections. Many have no laws on the books at all addressing it. Only 15 states explicitly prohibit non-citizen voting for local positions.
https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_permitting_noncitizens_to_vote_in_the_United_States
This fact alone should mandate that the federal level maintains their own registrations. The State and Federal levels have different applicable voter rolls because the state doesn’t have the same requirements as the federal elections.
Edit: Wrong word.
Citizenship is already required to vote in state and federal elections.
Then you should have no problem with this because it won’t stop anyone who is allowed to vote from voting, will it? :)
Everyone who votes absolutely should be checked to see if they are allowed to vote by citizenship. The only reason to disagree with this would be if you want non-citizens to vote in elections that they’re not supposed to.
Please read the rest of the comment
I’ve read it, it’s just more conspiracy theories.
I don’t trust the people making the national citizenship list to be honest about it.
Don’t you have to register to vote?…
Illegal immigrants don’t even have social security numbers…
They are promoting the disproven conspiracy theory that illegals are impersonating US citizens and then casting ballots under false names.
Greg Palast’s reporting proved that they are trying to purge minority and left leaning voters from voting rolls.
they want to see whos voting Dems, or independant(that isnt aligned with the gop to siphon votes from the DEMS)
I mean, you do, but… Often you just attest citizenship. Not sure if it’s checked on the backend or not. And illegal immigrants often have SSNs, just not their own. That’s how they can work much of the time.
Not that I expect many non-citizens are voting. The risk to reward ratio makes it really unattractive. Even citizens struggle to bother.
There was talk of establishing a national ID in the 90s but republicans revolted saying it would be the number of the beast. I guess their principles on the matter depend on whether the beast in question is Trump or Clinton. There would definitely be scope creep for such an ID, much like the SSN. I say just make it a national ID and eliminate the need to register to vote.
They were against the Beast because they didn’t know they’d agree with his policies.
I see nothing wrong with making sure people who vote are citizens, what I object to is kicking actual citizens off the voting roles because they’re not Republicans.
Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with this proposal, however, if we know one thing about this regime, it’s that they will use anything as a political tool for their advantage. So, it’s very likely that Trump uses this project as an avenue to revoke the citizenship of his perceived political enemies. It’s probably a good idea to get a passport issued before this gets started so it’s at least a little bit harder for them to claim you aren’t a citizen.
Not saying it’s unreasonable to err on the side of caution in opposing anything Trump does, but the move to end birthright citizenship is aimed at the automatic citizenship granted to anyone born on US soil, and anyone born anywhere with at least one American parent. The goal is to suppress non-white voting by invalidating citizenships for people MAGA considers “foreigners”. Most Americans were born in America to American-born parents, and have nothing to worry about unless MAGA tries to redefine citizenship at the Constitution level.
The goal is to suppress non-white voting by invalidating citizenships for people MAGA considers “foreigners”.
No, the goal is to stop illegal immigrants crossing the border into america, giving birth, and then never leaving because their kid is a US citizen.
You call yourself freedomadvocate yet you advocate for the destruction of freedom, interesting.
The automatic username generator called me that.
Also I don’t advocate for the “destruction of freedom”, just for common sense.
You should absolutely see something wrong. This is solving a problem that doesn’t exist, which means it’s actually trying to solve a different “problem”, namely that minorities get to vote.
Where I live we have something called the electoral roll, which is a nationwide database of registered voters.
It’s weird the states don’t also have this already.
I’m fairly sure we already do, but they are administered state by state, and not centralized.
Yeah, it is called voter rolls.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a legitimate implementation of such a system. It will absolutely be intentionally flawed in ways that allow the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans citizens. That’s 100% what always happens with Republican initiatives to “protect” elections. It will be made trivial to “accidentally” remove legitimate voter registrations, and a labyrinthian bureaucratic process to correct them.
So, states already have their list of registered voters, this is about culling people from that list the state doesn’t think should really be there (but really specifically those supporting the opposition of the party in power, typically Republicans removing minority groups).
The reason removing people is a real thing that needs to happen is that people aren’t permanent citizens of a state, they’re just residents, and what state they are a resident of for voting purposes is extremely easy to change, and doesn’t really require notifying the state you’re leaving, just the one you now want to be a resident of.
The reason this specific thing is bullshit is that every time anyone does any kind of check for non-citizens voting, it’s basically non-existent. Instead, they’re going to use the pretense of checking citizenship to check other information, which they’ll selectively find other discrepancies in to remove people who are registered, but are likely to support their opposition. Likely with little time before an election, so hopefully they don’t find out until it’s too late or other frictions cause them to forgo voting voluntarily.
So if you vote against him, you lose citizenship and he gets 100% of the votes?
look at which ones are voting democrats are voting independant, and target those areas for voter suppression, its simple as that.
Jokes on them. I cancelled my voter registration the day after the last election.
gop dominated states regularly purge democratic voters from the rolls anyways, its also the reason why people rarely get jury duty form the states that are regularly purged.
There is no evidence of voter fraud from people who actually vote. This is blatant government overreach to secure illegitimate votes, “if they’re in the system, then they can vote.”
This system will only lead to inflation of “bot” or fake identities to inflate voter numbers for any particular candidate polling.
Given that US citizens are getting immigration court notices and even getting deported, I’m sure this is a very accurate and trustworthy system.
We are in the dumbest timeline.
This must be opposed by all state authorities
Nothing dystopian about this, nope. JFC what an awful time to exist in.
Does an independent civillian organization maintain this list? Or is the servers gonna be located at trump tower and orange fuckface just deleted anyone with dark skin tone. from the “citizen” list?
(Rhetorical question, we all know the real answer lol)
Are the illegals voting in elections in the room with us right now?
