Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Allow Voter-Screening Tool
Voting rights organizations had challenged a Trump administration overhaul of a government database, arguing it could be used to disenfranchise eligible voters.
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Voting rights organizations had challenged a Trump administration overhaul of a government database, arguing it could be used to disenfranchise eligible voters.
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· 4:26 min
Sept. 8, 2026Updated 3:23 p.m. ET
The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a federal citizenship database to help spot invalid voters ahead of the midterm elections.
The administration is currently blocked from rolling out the tool, which the administration proposed using as part of a larger effort by President Trump to enact additional screening of voters ahead of November.
If the justices allow the administration to proceed, states could use the Department of Homeland Security database to check voter information against federal citizenship and Social Security records.
The emergency application to the justices marks the latest in a dizzying series of legal developments in the fight over the Trump administration’s push to upend mail-in voting procedures, even as some states begin sending out their ballots.
The court gave the challengers until next Tuesday to respond.
“The stakes could not be higher: Millions of Americans’ sensitive personal information and the integrity of our elections are on the line, just weeks before the midterm elections,” said Skye Perryman, the president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, which represents the challengers.
Mr. Trump has long raised skepticism about mail voting, and he has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that fraud is rampant among mail votes, including by noncitizens, who cannot legally vote in federal elections.
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Originally published by nytimes.com. Syndicated material does not necessarily reflect the views of Glamour Canada.
