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.

  • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    I see nothing wrong with making sure people who vote are citizens, what I object to is kicking actual citizens off the voting roles because they’re not Republicans.

    • SuperCub@sh.itjust.works
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      22 hours ago

      Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with this proposal, however, if we know one thing about this regime, it’s that they will use anything as a political tool for their advantage. So, it’s very likely that Trump uses this project as an avenue to revoke the citizenship of his perceived political enemies. It’s probably a good idea to get a passport issued before this gets started so it’s at least a little bit harder for them to claim you aren’t a citizen.

      • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Not saying it’s unreasonable to err on the side of caution in opposing anything Trump does, but the move to end birthright citizenship is aimed at the automatic citizenship granted to anyone born on US soil, and anyone born anywhere with at least one American parent. The goal is to suppress non-white voting by invalidating citizenships for people MAGA considers “foreigners”. Most Americans were born in America to American-born parents, and have nothing to worry about unless MAGA tries to redefine citizenship at the Constitution level.

        • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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          14 hours ago

          The goal is to suppress non-white voting by invalidating citizenships for people MAGA considers “foreigners”.

          No, the goal is to stop illegal immigrants crossing the border into america, giving birth, and then never leaving because their kid is a US citizen.

    • fodor@lemmy.zip
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      14 hours ago

      You should absolutely see something wrong. This is solving a problem that doesn’t exist, which means it’s actually trying to solve a different “problem”, namely that minorities get to vote.