U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it has upgraded its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program that will allow states to verify voter citizenship.
The agency said the upgrades will ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in federal elections by allowing states to use the SAVE program to verify citizenship using the last four digits of an individual’s Social Security number rather than the full nine digits.
“USCIS remains dedicated to eliminating barriers to securing the nation’s electoral process,” USCIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser said. “By allowing states to efficiently verify voter eligibility, we are reinforcing the principle that America’s elections are reserved exclusively for American citizens. We encourage all federal, state, and local agencies to use the SAVE program.”
The system enhancements enable register user agencies, especially those verifying voter rolls, to create a SAVE case without needing a U.S. Department of Homeland Security identifier or a complete Social Security number, officials said. The upgrades are part of USCIS’s commitment to fulfilling President Donald Trump’s Executive Order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”
SAVE Optimization has previously allowed state voting agencies to submit more than 46 million voter verification queries and has also allowed federal agencies to submit more than 110 million queries to help verify eligibility for federally funded benefits. Combined the requests have collectively verified the citizenship status more than 205 million times so far this year, compared to 25 million queries in all of calendar year 2024.