this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system.

The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.

NPR is the first news organization to report the details of the new system.

For decades, voting officials have noted that there was no national citizenship list to compare their state lists to, so to verify citizenship for their voters, they either needed to ask people to provide a birth certificate or a passport — something that could disenfranchise millions — or use a complex patchwork of disparate data sources.

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[–] voytrekk@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The US is generally the same where some local elections allow non-citizen residents to vote for local issues.

The issue with this is was not created publicly. We don't know what kind of data is being uses to determine someone's status. If someone is private enough to not have any data collected by its source, then they could be denied voting rights despite being legally able to vote.

It also could end up bring used as the sole source for verifying someone's status, despite having documents to prove otherwise.

[–] entwine413@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would imagine it's based on social security numbers.

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago

So it's credit score based?