MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, now also a candidate for lieutenant governor, has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to check voters’ citizenship, his office announced Wednesday.
The agreement will allow Alabama to gain access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE program, which will be used to identify undocumented immigrants registered to vote in the state. The program is administered by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, an agency under DHS.
“I have been very clear that only United States citizens should be voting in our elections, which is what our constitution, state and federal law unequivocally demand,” Allen said in a statement this week.
“My office plans to begin using SAVE to verify the citizenship status of registered voters in Alabama and all incoming voter registrations in the immediate future. Ensuring that only eligible United States citizens are registered to vote in Alabama is a vital step to protecting our elections.”
As the secretary of state, Allen has advocated and pushed for policy changes to strengthen election security, including the state’s recent withdrawal from the national voter system operated by the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a voter registration database used for identifying voter address changes. In its stead, Allen implemented a proprietary voter roll system dubbed the Alabama Voter Integrity Database, or AVID.
Allen also supported legislation last year that targeted ballot-harvesting, making it a Class C felony for someone to receive payment for assisting another person with an absentee ballot application. The bill, Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Sen. Garland Gudger, R-Cullman, led to several groups halting their voter outreach efforts out of fear of prosecution.
Under the SAVE program, Allen’s office will submit voter roll information to DHS, which in turn cross checklist the information against immigration databases to confirm a voter’s immigration status. Personal data collected through SAVE is protected under the Privacy Act of 1974, which limits Allen’s office to using said data for determining benefit, license and voting eligibility.