Trump administration's push for a national voter database meets court defeats

Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit seeking public records that could reveal how U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may have assisted the Trump administration in purging voter rolls under executive orders issued in 2025 and 2026. The suit requests communications between USCIS, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the White House, and officials such as Heather Honey and Kurt Olsen, alleging the use of the SAVE database to identify non‑citizens for voter eligibility checks.

Separately, elections lawyer Marc Elias warned that the Department of Justice’s effort to obtain state voter‑roll data for a national database has been repeatedly rejected by courts. The DOJ has lost 20 lawsuits across multiple appellate courts and faces no imminent victories, underscoring the administration’s stalled attempt to create a centralized voter database.