House panel advances use of federal tech program
- By AnnMarie Bedard / LSU Manship School News Service
- 18 hours ago
- 3 min read
BATON ROUGE — Though a voting rights advocate cautioned that technology used for voter checks could pose security risks to residents' personal identification information, the House Governmental Affairs Committee voted 9-7 Wednesday to move forward with a bill requiring use of the system.
Louisiana election officials have used the technology, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, to remove 403 noncitizens from the voting rolls.
The program, run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is designed to flag potentially ineligible voters.
The bill, House Bill 691, would require state election officials to check the names of all Louisiana voters in the database each year to ensure that they were citizens.
However, opponents argued that could lead to breaches of sensitive personal data, including Social Security numbers.
Sarah Whittington, advocacy director for the ACLU of Louisiana, said the SAVE system is not a standalone database and instead links information across multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Labor, Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration.
While traditionally personal information is kept between those three databases, SAVE would be combining all that information onto one source.
“This creates vulnerabilities by connecting multiple systems rather than securing data in one place,” Whittington said.
Several speakers questioned whether the risks outweigh the benefits.
“You’re looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” said state Rep. Carter W, D-Lake Charles.
Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry said at the hearing Wednesday that 130 illegal votes have been identified out of Louisiana’s 2.9 million registered voters since 2020. She previously had said that 83 noncitizens had voted in Louisiana elections since the 1980s.
Landy said some voting errors may stem from confusion from language barriers.
She also had said recently that even one improper vote is too much in that it cancels out a legitimate ballot.
Her office had been hesitant to use the SAVE program in the past due to high costs — $1.50 for every name examined — but in his second term, President Donald Trump removed the transaction fee.
As an alternative, some members of the committee proposed increasing education and training for workers at voter registration centers. Others noted that signage prohibiting noncitizen voting is only posted in English and suggested adding additional languages to reduce confusion.
Critics also pointed to concerns about the accuracy of the federal database. Texas is currently having issues with its reliability, with one county reporting a 25 percent error rate.
Under the proposed system in Louisiana, individuals flagged by the database would be referred to election integrity investigators.
There are six members on the election integrity committee.
The debate in Louisiana comes as President Trump pressures Congress to pass a similar federal voting bill.
That bill also would allow people to provide more identification, like passports or birth certificates, when registering to vote. The bill has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.
State Rep. Gerald “Beau” Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, proposed the Louisiana bill requiring the use of the federal citizenship verification program in Louisiana.
“We've had an increasing number of folks come across our Southern border, and there's been a crackdown on that,” Beaullieu said recently. “If we have more people who are in our country illegally, you would think that you would more than likely have an uptick in activity with people trying to illegally vote.”
Chandra Shae Foster, Louisiana state policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said at Wednesday’s hearing that the bill also could make it harder for eligible citizens to vote.
“It expands bureaucracy without solving a demonstrated problem,” Foster said.
Sara Louis-Ayo, a Baton Rouge community organizer with Voice of the Experienced, a nonprofit group, said she has not seen evidence of illegal voting in immigrant communities. Originally from South Sudan, she said many immigrants are especially cautious about protecting their legal status.
“No one comes here fleeing war to jeopardize their citizenship,” Louis-Ayo said.
Advocates said fear is already affecting civic participation. Ayo said 79 percent of naturalized citizens in Louisiana are not registered to vote.
Under the SAVE proposal, individuals suspected of being ineligible voters would receive notice by mail and have 21 days to prove their citizenship or face referral for prosecution.
