ATLANTA — Georgia will not use a controversial federal database to check voter citizenship ahead of this year’s midterm elections, despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing states to use the system.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says it is too close to the election for the state to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database. His office plans to resume using the system next year.
The database was created to verify eligibility for government benefits and has also been used to check voter rolls for noncitizens. The system has incorrectly flagged thousands of American voters, including naturalized citizens and people who have changed or hyphenated their names.
Raffensperger says Georgia does not rely on SAVE alone when verifying voter information.
“They have the naturalization and all of the citizenship records when people become American citizens, so we can access that directly and then check our data with them; we have a back and forth of exchanging information to make sure,” Raffensperger said.
He says the state also has a process in place to review cases when information from the system conflicts with Georgia’s records.
“We have a back and forth process, if this came back and they said this person is not a citizen yet we show them that they are, then we’re going to be looking to see what information they have, and then we will reach out to the voter,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger says Georgia has used the system before and has encountered only a small number of incorrect results.
“We’ve had maybe a few false negatives and then we would then check that and reach out to these potential voters to document that they have become American citizens. It just really allowed us to have accuracy,” he said.
The Secretary of State’s Office says Georgia’s voter lists remain 99.9% accurate.
A Justice Department investigation found three noncitizens who have voted in at least one federal election dating back to 2008.
WSB Radio’s Ashley Simmons & Veronica Waters contributed to this story.
