What are voter rolls?

As of 4/2/26 the United States Senate is still considering the SAVE Act, a foolish bill largely being pushed to appease Donald Trump over his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. There are a lot of parts of this bill and Trump’s agenda, but I wanted to write about one part of it that I have extensive expertise in. One provision of the SAVE act would require states to turn over voter rolls to the DHS. As someone who managed the Democratic copy of the voter rolls for Texas, I think I can clarify many misconceptions about voter rolls I’m hearing.

In Democratic politics we typically call the copy we keep the “Voter File”. The base of this is the voter rolls from the local election official in each state. For instance, in Texas, Jane Nelson is the Secretary of State and is in charge of election administration. Additional information is appended to it such as registration history, scores based on all kinds of information and more but its not super relevant here. The main thing to note is the local election official in each state keeps a list of all voters and shares them with interested parties in the state at a varying but usually essentially nominal price. For instance, in Minnesota anyone can request a copy of the voter file. It includes lots of important info including a list of everyone who is registered to vote. This means that Donald Trump already has access to a copy of the voter file in every state because he needed it to contact voters in his 2024 campaign.

This list notably only contains people the local election official believes can vote. It is subject to certain kind of mistakes. For instance, when I moved from Texas to Pennsylvania last month it is unlikely I was removed from the Texas voter file, because Texas is not a part of ERIC, the interstate compact which alerts states when people move and reregister. This is a somewhat common error for movers, and is a reason Texas should rejoin ERIC. However, systematic fraud is impossible to imagine through this method. There isn’t a way where enough voters voting in multiple states could change the outcome of the 2020 election. It simply doesn’t really happen.

The type of error Donald Trump is looking for is different. He has at different times lied that Democrats are creating fraudulent votes from the deceased or from illegal immigrants. I’ll start with deceased voters. Notably, ERIC was already set up to use SSA data to help remove deceased voters from the rolls. However, Republican states left ERIC due to Trump’s election conspiracy. The bottom line is that there isn’t any evidence of any significant amount of voter fraud using dead voters. I don’t know how seizing the rolls would possibly make this better though, as if the local election official knew if anyone was dead they would already be off the rolls.

Secondly, illegal immigrants aren’t voting. It just isn’t happening. There are occasional accidents or malicious aberrations, but it isn’t happening in significant numbers. Part of creating voter rolls is registering voters. During the voter registration process you have to declare that you are a citizen (noncitizens can’t legally vote). Notably, undocumented immigrants generally aren’t committing crimes, as they do not want to be deported. This is why the rates for doing this are so low. Moreover, even if they were, Trump should be able to use the data he already has to prove it, if that were true. Donald Trump doesn’t have a list of illegal immigrants he can just cross check with the voter rolls that would prove he won in 2020, because illegal immigrants aren’t trying to defraud local elections officials. They would get caught and deported. It doesn’t make sense.

Main takeaways:

• Donald Trump already has a copy of the voter rolls. He doesn’t need to seize anything. Conditioning removing his secret police from Minneapolis on giving up voting rolls is both pointless and terrifying.
• The best way to keep our elections secure is to be a part of ERIC, the bipartisan interstate compact, which Republicans started leaving during Biden’s presidency due to Trump’s conspiracy theories. ERIC already shares SSA death info. Perhaps, it could share federally known undocumented immigrants so they can be cross referenced against the voter file for the rare cases of illegal registration.
• Local election officials already require you to be a citizen to register to vote, and do their best to remove those who pass, or aren’t legally allowed.
• Given all of this, the best interpretation of why Trump is doing this is to cast doubt on the 2026 election. He is worried about losing, and seizing the voter rolls is yet another way he can make up lies about elections and lie that poor results are the result of non-existent voter fraud.