US Supreme Court allows Trump to use controversial voter 'verification' system

The US Supreme Court on ​Friday revived an expanded immigration database that US President Donald Trump's administration says aims to combat voting by noncitizens but that critics say will disenfranchise eligible voters. The justices granted a Justice Department request to block a judge's order that would have prevented state officials from using Social Security numbers and other information to conduct sweeping checks of ​the citizenship status ‌of registered voters against federal records. The administration's data-sharing arrangement is one of a series of actions the federal ⁠government has taken to increase its involvement in voting ahead of November's midterm elections. The US Constitution gives individual states the primary authority to run and administer elections. The Department of ‌Homeland Security last year redesigned a federal database known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to ⁠verify a person's citizenship and immigration status. The revamp allowed users to search many records at a time and to conduct searches using Social Security numbers. Several Republican-led states have compared their voter lists to the database, and some voters ...