Homeland Security Approves Plan To Mail Each State A Federal List Of Approved Voters, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Americans Were Presumed Citizens Until Proven Otherwise

WASHINGTON. In what the Department of Homeland Security characterized as a long-overdue housekeeping measure, the agency on Wednesday approved a plan under which the federal government will assemble a master list of every American it has determined is permitted to vote and forward a copy to each of the 50 states, resolving a long-standing concern that citizens were still being presumed eligible until someone proved otherwise.

Under the approved recommendation, which implements an executive order the President signed in March, DHS will work with the Social Security Administration to compile a "State Citizenship List" for every state, naming each resident the government has confirmed to be a citizen over the age of 18. The lists will be drawn from naturalization files, Social Security records, and an immigration database called SAVE, then transmitted to each state's chief election official, who may compare the federal roster of approved Americans against the one the state assembled itself.

States that wish to be helpful are invited to submit their entire voter rolls to the federal database to be checked in bulk, an arrangement the administration described as voluntary in the same week it suggested that states declining to participate might have something to hide. Officials noted the program would be fully operational by June 30, leaving election workers slightly under four weeks to reconcile their voter files against a federal list that does not yet exist.

The plan also contemplates a partnership with the United States Postal Service, which would supply DHS with data on who has requested and returned mail-in and absentee ballots so the department can monitor the flow for anomalies and generate what the order terms "investigative leads." "This is simply about making sure the people voting are the people who are supposed to be voting," said a senior administration official, who declined to specify how many improper voters the months-long effort had so far identified.

Voting rights groups noted that roughly 21 million eligible Americans do not have ready access to documents proving their citizenship, and that those without such paperwork are disproportionately low-income, elderly, or members of minority groups, meaning the chief practical effect of confirming citizenship may be to unconfirm the citizenship of people who have it. A second official acknowledged that some lawful voters could be flagged in error, but said the system was designed to err on the side of caution, by which the official appeared to mean the side of not voting.

At press time, DHS had clarified that any citizen omitted from the federal list of citizens would remain free to establish their existence at a later date, in person, with original documents, during business hours.