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.

  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    With everything he does the issue is the implementation. Deport criminal aliens? I’m all for it, but most of the deportees have no criminal record or they accuse them of crimes as if it’s the same thing as a conviction.

    Part of Trump’s grand plan is to make federal elections span only a single day. So maybe you check your status the day before and everything is fine, but the day of voting a glitch in the system says it can’t verify your citizenship. That’s it! No votes for you this year!

    • gian @lemmy.grys.it
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      8 hours ago

      Part of Trump’s grand plan is to make federal elections span only a single day.

      Don’t see the problem. For years in Italy elections were a one day only events (normally a Sunday) and everything worked fine.

      So maybe you check your status the day before and everything is fine, but the day of voting a glitch in the system says it can’t verify your citizenship. That’s it! No votes for you this year!

      There are solutions since the system need to be resilient, note that the glitch could be even not “wanted” so while you can think that $HATED_CANDIDATE want to keep his opponents away from the voting, in the same way $HATED_CANDIDATE want to make sure that his supporters can vote.

    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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      13 hours ago

      Deport criminal aliens? I’m all for it, but most of the deportees have no criminal record or they accuse them of crimes as if it’s the same thing as a conviction.

      Illegal immigration is a crime.