From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):
Friday, December 12 is the deadline for public comments on a policy the Trump Administration secretly adopted in May, giving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) access to personal data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) on nearly every U.S. resident. DHS has been encouraging states to use this data to reverify the citizenship of voters, and DHS says state voting officials have already queried these data tens of millions of times. A court order recently forced the Administration to disclose the arrangement and allow public input.
The Administration policy raises significant legal, privacy, and other concerns. One of the most serious is that Social Security data don’t have complete or up-to-date citizenship information, so using them to verify citizenship will almost inevitably lead to errors — potentially disenfranchising U.S. citizen voters ahead of the midterm elections. …
For people not receiving Social Security benefits, SSA has long stated that its citizenship data are incomplete, can be outdated, and “do not provide definitive information on U.S. citizenship.” While SSA data can be helpful in proving that someone is a citizen — for example, to meet Medicaid’s citizenship requirements — the data have several well-known shortcomings in proving that someone isn’t a citizen. …
6 comments:
This administration has a tendency of not following court orders. Why should this issue be any different?
The issue many people when they become citizens either do not know or forget to update their citizenship with SSA. So A LOT of records are wrong because of this. And A LOT of these people have been citizens often for decades. So you know this regime will weaponize this information.
What could possibly go wrong. Sounds like a solid plan......said nobody, ever. 🙄. This is a disgrace to our freedom as American's. My state's constitution guarantees privacy (one of the few). I wish the US constitution did. This will over-ride the values my state holds dear to our residents. They voted to open the constitution shortly after the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, as ours' protect the rights of women as well, and it was OVERWHELMINGLY rejected. The state constitution stays where it is per the people. With the protections written into it the way as it was intended. Sadly, we can still get stomped on by the Federal Government. Where will this end? (Scary thought, I know).
Why is the Department of Homeland Security getting involved with State administration of elections? I can understand why they would have a role in preventing foreign actors from interfering in elections, and assisting with cybersecurity issues...but this is a profoundly dumb reason to hijack sensitive SSA information. Do these people truly believe there are thousands of non-citizens voting? This issue has been studied extensively, with zero evidence of a material voting fraud problem.
They either believe their own conspiracy brainrot bullshit, or plan to use this data for some other purpose.
And the fools cheering this on are largely the exact same rednecks who refused to get the COVID vaccine because of fear it would somehow allow Bill Gates to gather information about them.
It's not even a matter of not knowing or forgetting...in most cases where people have been enumerated and aren't receiving benefits, they're not required to tell SSA that they became citizens. I don't know what SSA would do if a non-beneficiary called up or walked in and said "hey by the way I'm a citizen now." I don't trust that even if someone did this, the field office or teleservice center would make the right changes in SSA's systems 100% of the time. So there are lots of naturalized citizens who aren't recorded as such in SSA's systems because it doesn't matter--it would be a waste of time for SSA to gather and incorporate this data because it doesn't change what benefits anyone is owed or getting. Kinda like how SSA didn't bother adding death dates for people born 150 years ago because nobody was getting paid on the records....and then DOGE just plopped in fake death dates and said millions of people all died in March 2025.
It's not just naturalized citizens who will be affected by this data sharing. SSA didn't routinely collect citizenship info at enumeration for infants until 1981. So there's a decent chance that any native-born Gen Xer or Boomer who hasn't applied for benefits isn't listed as a citizen in SSA's system. Which is fine for SSA purposes--when they apply for benefits, SSA will verify their citizenship--but a real problem if that data goes to DHS and then to states through SAVE and all of a sudden they're off the voter rolls.
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