this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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  • Widespread Errors: An expanded federal tool for identifying noncitizens on voter rolls is making persistent mistakes, particularly in assessing citizenship for people born outside the U.S.
  • Banned From Voting: In Missouri, state officials told local clerks to temporarily ban flagged voters from casting ballots, even though hundreds turned out to be citizens.
  • Texas Confusion: As errors emerged in SAVE data, local clerks said the state hadn’t provided them with clear guidance and worried about disenfranchising eligible citizens.
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[–] CobraChicken3000@lemmy.ca 171 points 4 days ago (3 children)

It's a feature, not a bug.

[–] Virtvirt588@lemmy.world 65 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is how political cleansing begins. Once the system is turned on, voting for anything slightly left will cast you as a criminal of the state.

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 31 points 4 days ago

Certainly they won't use years of collected metadata from social networks about political sentiment, right? ...right?

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago

This has happened all over there US already. Someone challenges your right to vote and it's your job to prove your eligibility. Can't show up to your appointment? No ID? No bills going to that address? Only have a PO Box address? No voting for you!

[–] danekrae@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And still, americans believe the democrats will win... Even after everything in the past, everything being said in the present, they're still only going to protest.

[–] ruekk@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (4 children)

What do you want Americans to do? Start an open insurrection? Do you really realize how many thousand of people would die the instant a semi-armed civilian led force tried to fight back?

[–] Tehbaz@lemmy.wtf 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's a case of die standing up or on your knees in a 'big beautiful' concentration camp. A peaceful general strike and spending boycott would be a start, but nobody seems to be willing to make that sacrifice until it's too late.

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[–] qaeta@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Fewer than will if they continue to do nothing.

[–] KelvarCherry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (7 children)

I'm genuinely losing my mind at this take. For the last 13 months we've seen thousands of human people walked to their death -- watched planes of human beings take off and return empty; and still half of the comments I see that suggest taking action beyond peaceful marches and waiting for the 2026 midterms get this "smarter than thou" smug response from people, some claiming to be 50501 liberals. Sometimes it's, like, 15 lines and a song quote; with the occasional ALL CAPS "DO NOT TAKE THE BAIT".

People are dying, folks; now. Come to reality. A clash with ICE, especially in the first months when they were untrained and barely armed, wouldn't have accelerated anything--because we didn't have that and yet we are here. This mythical "Insurrection Act" invocation wouldn't have caused the terrorism we are witnessing now; nor the deployments in LA or Portland. Yes, people will die in clashes with the state; but what's the alternative? Letting people die in raids from the state? We watched camera footage with video of pro-Palestinian activists getting disappeared. We've seen masked agents killing hundreds of people across the states, every month. We've seen them raid neighborhoods, and pull people into vans. We've seen our police watch, do nothing, then arrest the bystanders for "causing a disturbance". Every. Day.

The part of me that is clinging onto some partial hope in human nature wants to blame this widespread passivity propaganda for the reason it took a year to have the resistance effort in Minneapolis, which there had been nothing like until that point. Really, though, I sense the real reason behind these arguments and the wider inaction, is that the targets of ICE have been predominantly people of color, and mainly Hispanic folks. So, too, were the kids in cages through the first Trump and Biden administrations.

I understand that Holocaust poem in a depth that I just didn't understand before. I understand the Holocaust documentaries and testimonies I've watched in a depth I hadn't gotten before.

You aren't outsmarting the Republicans by standing back as they kill thousands; tens-of-thousands; hundreds-of-thousands of people of color. You're giving them exactly what they wanted: A “second American Revolution”; [white]-bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How many people have you gone out and killed? It sure sounds like you are imploring people to take to the streets and violently attack the government. What have you done in support of this goal?

I'm actually suggesting the Hong Kong protest principle of "Do Not Split"

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you think things are already as bad as they can get, then you lack perspective.

There's still a chance of electoral victory. Progressives across the country are having punishing victories. Don't throw away that momentum by being too trigger-happy. People are waking up, don't put them back to sleep.

If the republicans rig or steal the election (which they certainly intend to, but it's not yet certain how successful they'll be), then all gloves are off and the third and fifth sentences of the Declaration of Independence kicks in.

Until that point, the fourth sentence still applies.

It always could get worse. That doesn't change how bad they are now; nor that they're steadily getting worse.

In the event Republicans do steal that election, then what? How do we decide that happened? If the elections are delayed a month, is that the cue? What about three months? What about two years? What if the new election will happen next month? Do we still declare the election stolen? What if Republicans keep all the seats they have in the House and Senate, and gain 20 more in the House. Is that rigged because Democrats "should have" won? By what logic?

We're seeing an administration united on brutalizing people and mangling our democracy, brutalize people and mangle our democracy. Maybe 2026 will be the year progressives sweep the House—Maybe—; but after 9 years watching my country continue to push the bar on how bad things can get, while constantly being told that there was going to be a progressive blue wave resurgence—and seeing people say the same throughout Reagan, Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Trump-1, Biden, Trump-2...

I feel we're being played here. Are we not just being strung along? All I've heard is this messaging to wait just a bit longer and then watching everything get worse as people sit idle.

I just find it awfully suspicious how the winning plan to defeat this Corporate/White supremacist/Christofascist regime is to keep everything calm so the corporations can keep earning; while the white supremacists and Christofascists keep killing and maiming thousands of people of color and others they've branded "undesirables". Where is this messaging coming from? It's being echoed all around, but what is the source? It feels like we're being gaslit here, or led by yet another naive voice telling us to "stop overreacting".

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[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

People want them to do literally anything at all

The perception is you're taking it lying down

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 33 points 3 days ago

'Accident'. 🙄

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 8 points 2 days ago

The source of the bad data was a Department of Homeland Security tool called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE.

Once used mostly to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits, SAVE has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of President Donald Trump, who has long falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens lurk on state voter rolls, tainting American elections.

Why is the Department of Homeland Security in charge of a program to check if people can get benefits?

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Seems like it’s working as they intended then.

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 38 points 3 days ago

As designed.

[–] Emi@ani.social 19 points 3 days ago (2 children)

As European I'm so confused by this. You just show your state ID and that's it, they check on paper that you voted, then you put your voting papers into the box.

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

You’re are rightly confused. This is all theatrics by the far right to penalize liberal areas. Areas they deem as high risk of fraud or illegals, in other words left leaning states and counties.

[–] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They just made it so not all state IDs count.

[–] Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

All animals are equal, some are more equal

[–] infinitevalence@discuss.online 53 points 4 days ago (1 children)

thats the whole point, oops, you cant vote, sucks you were voting against us anyway....

[–] VivianRixia@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

But also, oops, you cant vote, sucks that you were going to vote for us anyway

[–] Armand1@lemmy.world 42 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Given that only 22 noncitizens over the course of like 10 years (can't remember the exact statistic) tried to vote, the way to get the best accuracy would be to just hard code the answer to "yes, they can vote". Then you get over 99.99% accuracy.

[–] pageflight@piefed.social 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

From the article:

At least seven states with a total of about 35 million registered voters have publicly reported the results of running their voter rolls through the system. Those searches have identified roughly 4,200 people — about 0.01% of registered voters — as noncitizens. This aligns with previous findings that noncitizens rarely register to vote.

[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm not even sure what incentive they would have. We already have a huge problem with citizens not voting because they think their vote won't change anything. Is anyone going to think "I'm going to risk going to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for me to spend my free time filling out a ballot box which will have a 0.000001% chance of having any effect"?

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Extra mistakes in blue states I’m sure.

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

In large minority districts of entrenched Republican enclaves

[–] starblursd@lemmy.zip 24 points 3 days ago

"mistakenly" flags democrat registered voters? I can only assume

"It's only rigged when we lose" - maga

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 3 days ago

That was always the plan

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 18 points 4 days ago

"Mistakenly"

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Turns out, they were just using this meme as their requirements document.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago

You know how satire works, right? It's based on existing reality.

[–] Ghostie@lemmy.zip 14 points 3 days ago

“Mistakenly”. Bugs are the kind of things that can easily explain away intent to mess stuff up.

[–] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 14 points 4 days ago

"Mistakes".

Cue Ron Howard voiceover.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

Voting Blue? No Vote For You!

[–] Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

So if it says I can't vote because I'm not a us citizen and my state bans me from voting for it, am I off the hook on taxes?

No taxation without representation, right?

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Logically yes, but these are not logical times.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Repeatedly checking the tool results in massive numbers of mistakes.

If you check the same person twice, the odds of a false positive increase exponentially.

[–] darthsundhaft@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago

They're probably using AI...

[–] LibertyLizard@quokk.au 6 points 4 days ago

It's almost like there's almost zero non-citizens voting or something...

Not that there's even a need to prevent them from voting.

[–] rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

That's ok, so does the government

[–] codapine@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago

Task failed successfully.

[–] Rhoeri@piefed.social 5 points 4 days ago

As it was intended to do.

Isn't that the point? Ensure there aren't that many voters? I'd say it works as I tended.

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