(Columbus) - Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced today that a new court order has upheld Ohio's unrestricted access to the federal government’s citizenship verification data, also known as the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) system.
“This is a massive win for election integrity in Ohio,” said Secretary LaRose. “We helped lead a national effort to expand the use of the SAVE system so we can ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote in our state. Ohio secured a 20-year settlement agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to maintain unfettered access to this important verification tool. The radical left ran to a friendly court to try to shut us down, but, fortunately, our right to access these records has not only been restored but also upheld as lawful."
The district court for the Northern District of Florida ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to comply with its obligations under its settlement agreements with Ohio and other states. DHS recently disabled some of the SAVE system’s most effective search features under an order from a District of Columbia federal court, but the Florida court found the federal government is “plainly in violation of the settlement agreement.” The court ordered DHS to “immediately comply with the court-approved settlement agreement in this case by reinstating Plaintiffs’ access to the bulk-upload and SSN-search features in the SAVE system."
“We will not be bullied or intimidated by those who want to dismantle Ohio’s election integrity safeguards,” said Secretary LaRose. “They call us the national gold standard for a reason, and we’ll continue the fight to maintain the accuracy of our voter rolls despite those who want to stop us."