WASHINGTON – Access to a federal database that Maricopa County has used to verify voter citizenship remains limited, under conflicting rulings from federal judges in Florida and the District of Columbia.
Last year, the Trump administration gave election officials the ability to check voter registrations against Social Security records, and also created a new option intended to weed out as many ineligible voters as possible: bulk searches.
Two weeks ago, a Biden-appointed judge in Washington shut down access to that expanded data, ruling that it violates the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. The judge affirmed that ruling Wednesday, a day after a Trump-appointed judge in Florida ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore access to four Republican-led states: Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana.
“The Court understands that this puts Defendants in a bind because they are subject to two contradictory orders,” the Florida judge, T. Kent Wetherell, wrote.
The Trump administration has appealed the order from the D.C. district court judge, Sparkle Sooknanan, who issued her initial order June 22. The appeals court has not yet heard arguments.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of DHS, has not publicly acknowledged that it shut down the system or removed the data the judge said ran afoul of privacy rights. But the system has been unavailable since June 23, when the agency announced optimization updates to the web browser experience.
In March 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, created in 1986 to verify immigration status and eligibility for government benefits.
Arizona election officials began using the SAVE system after voters approved a measure in 2004 that required proof of citizenship.
But the database wasn’t nearly comprehensive enough for elections officials to confirm citizenship for every voter, only those born outside the United States. And for that, they needed an alien registration number or the number from a naturalization certificate.
Social Security data was added last year by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, along with the option to conduct bulk searches.
In Sooknanan’s view, federal agencies “haphazardly combined and repurposed” the personal information of millions of Americans and relied on citizenship data they knew could be inaccurate.
Maricopa County began using the expanded SAVE database to review voter rolls in August 2025.
Yavapai County’s Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 in March to begin using the expanded federal database to screen its voter rolls. Recorder Michelle Burchill said she would use it to review 238 federal-only voters who are barred from state and local elections because they haven’t proved citizenship. Often, those are newcomers from other states.
In Maricopa County, Recorder Justin Heap has aggressively sought to identify ineligible voters since he took office last year, and his office has used the expanded database to conduct large-scale citizenship checks.
Heap is a former Republican state legislator allied with election deniers who echo Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen in Arizona and elsewhere.
In February, he announced that his office had used the federal database to identify 137 potential noncitizens, including 60 people who had previously voted. His office has not said if any were confirmed to be noncitizens.
He also used the tool to confirm the citizenship of more than 61,000 voters whose registrations were flagged in 2024, when more than 200,000 registrations were called into question statewide. The confusion revolved around whether many drivers who renewed their licenses after 2004 had actually provided proof of citizenship, as Motor Vehicle Division records indicated.
Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director at All Voting is Local, a voter advocacy group that operates in eight battleground states, asserted that Heap has undermined voter confidence by hiding how his office has used the SAVE tool.
“We don’t exactly know how Recorder Heap has been using the tool because his office has not been particularly transparent about their processes,” he said, adding that there is reason for suspicion because “Heap hasn’t just aligned himself with election deniers; he is one.”
Heap did not respond to interview requests.
A spokeswoman, Judy Keane, said the restrictions on the SAVE tool will not affect Maricopa County’s preparations for the July 21 primary or the November general election.
The expanded SAVE database aligns with Trump’s SAVE America Act, a proposal that would require voters to provide photo ID and proof of citizenship, and would largely eliminate the use of mail-in ballots.
The House approved the bill but it has stalled in the Senate, despite intense lobbying by Trump.
Arizona has remained at the center of Trump’s false claims that widespread election fraud and voting by noncitizens affected the 2020 presidential election. Republican officials have since pursued investigations into voter rolls and citizenship verification.
“I think the biggest risk is preventing a qualified voter from voting,” Thomas Collins, executive director of the Arizona Clean Elections Commission, said by email.
He said he doubts that restrictions on using the SAVE tool will have much practical effect because there is no evidence that noncitizens have registered in significant numbers.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice sent letters to election officials in all 50 states, threatening them with criminal prosecutions if they allow noncitizen voting.
Adrian Fontes, Arizona secretary of state, rejected suggestions that county recorders have been letting noncitizens cast ballots.
“We will continue following Arizona law – not directions that come from political rhetoric or intimidation,” he said in a statement.
Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, a group that Democrats have described as “anti-voting,” said the concerns raised by the D.C. court about privacy and the validity of data are “smokescreens.”
“I look forward to this ruling being overturned on appeal, like so many early ‘wins’ for liberal groups in the lower courts,” he said by email.
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments next fall on two Arizona laws – one of which is intended to identify voters where there is “reason to believe” they may be a noncitizen. A federal appeals court put both laws on hold.
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