2026-05-04T08:00:51.197Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
特朗普与共和党在选举日前仍大力推动激进选民名册清理，挑战司法先例
作者：
蒂尔尼·斯尼德
4小时前发布
发布于：美国东部时间2026年5月4日凌晨4:00
唐纳德·特朗普
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2024年11月5日，选民在纽约一处投票站填写选票。莱昂纳多·穆尼奥斯/法新社/盖蒂图片社/资料图
几十年来，人们普遍认为任何大规模选民名册清理都必须至少在选举前90天完成。
但如今共和党与特朗普政府正在挑战联邦法律中关于选举前三个月内禁止“系统性”移除选民的规定范围，与此同时特朗普总统正推动对选民名册中非公民及其他不符合资格选民展开更激进的审查。
美国司法部已启动一项庞大计划，要求获取几乎所有州的选民登记档案，并审查其中疑似非公民的选民。司法部此次审查使用了名为SAVE——即“系统性外国人福利资格核查系统”——的联邦移民数据库工具，而该系统已被证明容易产生误报结果。
部分州选举官员表示，他们希望获得在选举前数月乃至数周内移除选民姓名的自由，但其他选举官员以及选民维权人士担忧，随着清理计划升级，符合资格的选民有被剥夺选举权的风险，尤其是在特朗普试图加大介入力度的情况下。他们表示，所谓的“静默期”是必要的，以便被错误纳入清理名单的合格选民有足够时间重新完成选民登记。
特朗普及其政府高级官员一直坚称，大量外国选民混入选民名册已经破坏了选举公平，尽管多项研究表明非公民投票的情况极为罕见。
曾成功起诉各州违反《全国选民登记法》90天“静默期”规定的竞选法律中心战略诉讼高级主任布伦特·弗格森表示，特朗普政府试图让联邦政府更直接地介入投票进程，这使得共和党关于静默期的法律论点“更令人担忧”。
“这将造成一种局面：联邦政府本身成为试图在选举前数日清理选民名册的主体，这显然是非法的，”弗格森说。
2014年，一家上诉法院裁定佛罗里达州不得在选举前90天内使用SAVE数据系统清理选民名册，原因是《全国选民登记法》中有静默期条款。
特朗普政府与共和党辩称，该禁令不适用于针对非公民和其他本就不应被登记的选民的清理行动。
弗吉尼亚州共和党州官员曾提出过这一主张，但遭到另一家上诉法院驳回。但2024年，最高法院就该案下达紧急命令，允许时任弗吉尼亚州州长格伦·扬金在选举前数日重启一项利用州档案识别所谓非公民选民的移除计划。（民主党州长阿比盖尔·斯潘伯格今年就职后正式终止了该计划，相关诉讼也已和解。）
如今，共和党全国委员会正请求最高法院就亚利桑那州一起案件的实质问题作出裁决。司法部在其索要州登记档案的诉讼中声称，静默期不适用于其正在开展的选民名册审查。在俄亥俄州，共和党务卿弗兰克·拉罗斯也提出类似主张，为其使用SAVE系统和州车管所数据开展的选民名单维护计划辩护。
支持更激进名单维护计划的人士表示，已有防范措施可防止剥夺选民选举权。
“以程序细节为借口，声称各州——尤其是选举官员——不应履行职责或维护准确的选民名册，这是荒谬的，”共和党全国委员会发言人扎克·帕金森告诉CNN。
帕金森表示，他反对“因为可能存在错误剥夺选举权的情况，我们就无法保障选举诚信”的观点。
存在缺陷的数据匹配计划
共和党选举官员已经开始采用更激进的选民名册维护计划，多个州利用特朗普对SAVE系统的改革，扩大了该系统依托的联邦数据库，并简化了各州的使用流程。但这些官员发现，SAVE标记为疑似非公民的人群中，有相当比例实际上是公民。
例如，爱达荷州去年使用SAVE系统审查其选民名册时，在近110万登记选民中初步发现760名潜在非公民。
但爱达荷州务卿菲尔·麦格莱恩告诉CNN，经过进一步调查，仅有约36人被移交执法部门，调查其非公民登记或投票行为。
与此同时，地方选举办事员抱怨称，州选举主管几乎没有提供任何指导，只是将SAVE标记为疑似非公民的选民名单转交下来。
根据一起挑战得克萨斯州使用SAVE系统的诉讼，地方官员对这些名单的处理方式因县而异。部分县会利用记录公民身份的州档案对匹配结果展开额外调查，缩小范围后通知那些将被取消登记资格的选民，除非他们能提供公民身份证明。其他县则直接向所有被SAVE标记为疑似非公民的选民发送通知。
保守派人士强调，有备选方案可保护那些未收到选举官员通知、登记资格将被取消的符合资格选民，前提是他们能提供公民身份证明。
例如在弗吉尼亚州案中，该州当时辩称，根据该州的同日登记法，任何被错误移除的公民在前往投票站时都可以重新登记。在没有同日登记制度的州，这类选民可以使用临时投票权，即他们的选票会被暂时封存，只有在后台解决资格问题后才会被计入。
美国国土安全部上月早些时候告诉CNN，作为其改革SAVE计划的一部分，该部门已指派150名员工对系统产生的匹配结果进行“人工核查”，排查“不一致之处”，然后再将结果发送给各州。
截至4月初，国土安全部在提交的6000万份比对案例中，识别出2.1万名选民名册上的潜在非公民，比例为0.035%。但两党政策中心选举项目主任雷恩·奥雷表示，还有更大比例——约3%的比对结果——无法得出明确结论。
“如果你在90天窗口期内开展这项工作，风险会更高：这些选民可能没有足够时间或收到足够通知，在选举前准备好所需文件，”奥雷告诉CNN。“他们的出生证明可能不符合要求，或者手边没有出生证明，又或者没有护照。补办这些文件可能需要数月时间。”
麻省理工学院研究选举系统的教授查尔斯·斯图尔特表示，此外，取消这类清理行动的静默期可能会“压垮”选举官员，他们不得不在选举前的最后冲刺阶段调查数据匹配结果是否准确。
“之所以要在选举之外开展这类调查，是有原因的，”斯图尔特说。
愈演愈烈的法律斗争
请求最高法院裁决《全国选民登记法》静默期适用范围的亚利桑那州案，不太可能在中期选举前审结。但正如2024年选举前起诉弗吉尼亚州和阿拉巴马州移除选民行动的案件那样，紧急诉讼可能迫使法院对选举前数周乃至数日内开展的任何移除计划作出裁决。
随着特朗普提出的全国公民身份选民核查法案在国会搁浅，多个州已通过法律，要求定期对照SAVE系统核查选民名册，这意味着今年秋季该问题可能再次被纳入最高法院的紧急审理日程。
By
Tierney Sneed
4 hr ago
PUBLISHED May 4, 2026, 4:00 AM ET
Donald Trump
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Voters fill out ballots at a polling station in New York on November 5, 2024.
Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images/File
For decades, it’s generally been assumed that any mass purges of voter rolls had to be completed at least 90 days out from an election.
But Republicans and the Trump administration are now testing the scope of the federal law that imposes that ban on “systematic” removal programs within three months of an election, as President Donald Trump pushes for more aggressive reviews of voter rolls for non-citizens and other ineligible voters.
The Justice Department has launched a sprawling effort to obtain nearly every state’s voter registration file and to review those files for suspected non-citizens. For its review, the DOJ is using a federal immigration database tool known as SAVE – or the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements – which has shown itself prone to produce false positives.
Some state election officials have indicated they want the freedom to remove names in the months or weeks before an election, but other election officials – along with voter advocates – are concerned that eligible voters are at risk of being disenfranchised with the ramp up in the purge programs, especially as Trump tries to get more involved. They say that the so-called “quiet period” is needed to give eligible voters who are mistakenly caught up in such removals adequate time to get back on the rolls.
Trump and top officials in his administration been relentless in their claims that a flood of foreigners on the voter rolls have polluted elections, even though studies have shown non-citizen voting to be very rare.
That the Trump administration is attempting to insert the federal government more directly in the voting process makes the Republicans’ legal arguments about the quiet period “more concerning,” said Brent Ferguson, the senior director of strategic litigation at Campaign Legal Center, which has successfully sued states for violating the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day “quiet period.”
“It sets up a situation where the federal government itself is the actor trying to purge voters from the rolls in the days before the election, which is clearly illegal,” Ferguson said.
An appeals court ruled in 2014 that Florida could not use the SAVE data system to purge its rolls within 90 days of the election because of the quiet period provision in the NVRA.
The Trump administration and Republicans argue that the ban does not apply to purges aimed at non-citizens and other people who should have never been registered in the first place.
Another appeals court rejected that argument when it was made by Republican state officials in Virginia. But the Supreme Court in 2024 issued an emergency order in that case that let then-Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin restart a voter removal program just days before the election that used state records to identify alleged non-citizens. (Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger formally ended the program when she took office this year and the lawsuit was settled.)
Now the Republican National Committee is asking the Supreme Court to take up the question on the merits in a case arising from Arizona. The Justice Department has claimed in the litigation over its demands for state registration files that the quiet period doesn’t apply to voter roll review it is undertaking. And in Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose ismaking similar arguments to defend his list maintenance programs that use SAVE and state DMV data.
Advocates for more aggressive list maintenance programs say that there are fail-safes in place to protect against disenfranchisement.
“The argument that states – and especially election officials – shouldn’t do their jobs or maintain accurate voter rolls because of a technicality is absurd,” RNC spokesperson Zach Parkinson told CNN.
Parkinson said he rejects the idea that “we can’t have election integrity because an imagery person might be disenfranchised.”
Flawed data-matching programs
Already, Republican election officials have embraced more aggressive voter list maintenance programs, with several states taking advantage of the overhaul Trump did to SAVE to expand the federal databases it draws upon, and to make it easier for states to use. But those officials have found that a significant number of the people that SAVE has flagged as likely non-citizens in the comparison are in fact citizens.
For instance, an Idaho review of its voter rolls last year using the SAVE system initially found 760 potential noncitizens among its nearly 1.1 million registered voters.
But after further investigation, only about three dozen were referred to law enforcement to be probed for non-citizen registration or voting activity, Idaho Secretary of StatePhil McGrane told CNN.
In the meantime, local election clerks have complained that they’ve received little or no guidance from their state election chiefs who have passed along lists of people SAVE has tagged as likely non-citizens.
According to a lawsuit challenging Texas’ use of SAVE, what local officials do with those lists varies greatly county-by-county. Some counties do additional investigations into those matches – using state records that document citizenship records – to narrow the pool of voters who are then notified they will have their registrations cancelled unless they show proof of citizenship. Other counties are sending notices to every voter identified by SAVE as a suspected non-citizen.
Conservatives stress that there are backup options to protect eligible voters who miss the notice from their election officials that their registrations are being cancelled unless they provide proof they’re citizens.
In the Virginia case, for instance, the state argued at the time that any citizen who was wrongly removed could re-register when they showed up at the polls, under the state’s same day registration laws. In states without same day registration, such voters would have access to provisional voting, which allows voters to cast ballots that are set aside and only counted once the eligibility issues are resolved on the back end.
The Department of Homeland Security told CNN earlier last month that as part of its revamp of the SAVE program, it’s tasked 150 employees to conduct “manual checks” of the matches produced by the program for “inconsistencies” before sending those results to the state.
As of early April, DHS had identified 21,000 individuals as a potential non-citizens on the voter rolls out of 60 million cases submitted – a rate of 0.035%. However, a larger share – about 3% of all comparisons – have come back as inconclusive, according to Wren Orey, the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project.
“When you’re doing that within that 90-day period, that risk is just higher that those voters won’t have adequate time or notice to be able to provide the documents that they’ll need ahead of the election,” Orey told CNN. “Maybe their birth certificate doesn’t meet the requirements. Maybe they don’t have one handy, maybe they don’t have a passport. That could take months to get.”
In addition, ending the quiet period for those types of purges could “dump” more work on election officials who will have to investigate whether the data matches are accurate while they’re in the final sprint to prepare for an election, said Charles Stewart, an MIT professor who studies election systems.
“There is a reason why you do these investigations away from the election,” Stewart said.
The bubbling legal fight
The Arizona case asking the Supreme Court to resolve the scope of the NVRA’s quiet period is unlikely to be resolved before the midterm elections. But it’s possible that emergency litigation could force courts to weigh in on any removal programs conducted weeks or days before November’s vote, as was the case with lawsuits challenging Virginia’s and Alabama’s efforts to remove voters just before the 2024 election.
As Trump’s national citizenship voter verification bill has floundered in Congress, states have passed laws requiring regular checks of the voter rolls against SAVE, setting up the potential that the issue will be back on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket this fall.