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The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) requires that state verify that an individual registering to vote (Registrant) in a federal election exists as an individual within the Social Security Administration data. This act required states to create a computerized voter registration system that verifies this information with the states Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA, MVD, DMV, etc.). If the registrant provides a driver’s license number (DLN) when submitting a voter registration application, that DLN is then checked against the MVA data to confirm identity and sometimes citizenship. If the registrant does not provide a DLN when registering to vote, identity can be obtained using the Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) interface which tries to find a match using name, date of birth, and the last 4 digits of the registrant’s social security number. Through the HAVV interface the Social Security Administration (SSA) verifies the accuracy of the 3 data points and returns that information through the MVA to the states voter registration system. This is known as the 4-digit HAVV system.

Currently 43 states use this 4-digit system to verify voter information. New Mexico, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia do not use the 4-digit system, as they are permitted to use the full 9-digit SSN on their voter registration applications. North Dakota does not require voter registration, so it does not use any SSA verification system, and the District of Columbia and the US territories do not use this system either.
While the system does validate identity, it does not validate citizenship. Nationally, no definitive proof of citizenship is required to vote in elections for federal offices. Arizona is the only state in the country that requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote, however Arizona uses a bifurcated system that complies with federal law, allowing individuals who do not provide proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, however these individuals are not permitted to vote for state and local offices. This does not mean that non-citizens are registering to vote everywhere, but it does reflect a gap in the elections process that has caused significant concern to the majority of Americans when polled about the subject.
The SSA tracks the weekly number of HAVV transactions by state which is public data and can be reviewed on their website www.ssa.gov . These transactions only represent one step of the voter registration process and there are many other verification methods implemented by states when registering a voter including checking the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, Death indexes, and felon/incapacitated lists to name a few, to ensure only those eligible to vote are registered.

HAVA also requires registrants’ information to be checked against the MVA before trying to validate with the SSA. There are currently 31 states who do not issue drivers licenses to non-citizens, so any registrant information in those states would in-fact be checking for citizenship. The remaining 19 plus the District of Columbia do have programs that can issue drivers licenses to non-citizens with appropriate identifying information. All drivers’ licenses are not equal though, and in the MVA databases there are distinctions between citizen and non-citizen drivers licenses that would indicate to the voter registration system the citizenship status of that registrant.

Ultimately, while checks do take place and all states perform some kind of verification on registrants, there is no requirement to prove citizenship in order to vote in a federal election. The only protection citizens have is the requirement for a registrant to attest that they are a citizen, and if an alien votes in a federal election, it is a crime under US law, punishable by fines and up to a year in prison. Many would argue that there need to be more controls and harsher punishments in place to deter bad actors and ensure only citizens are registering to vote, and we at the Voter Reference Foundation tend to agree. While the risk of non-citizens participating our election system is relatively small, the impact it can have on voter confidence is enormous and extremely disruptive to the electoral process. There needs to be more transparency and accountability surrounding this portion of our election system, which is why we work so diligently to provide transparency into voter registration data across the country and educational provide information to the voting public. As citizens it is our duty to be active participants in our electoral system to preserve our republic for future generations.

Editor’s note: Recent concern has risen regarding the quantity of checks that are ran within each state, using the state of Arizona as an example, the current system was originally designed to check MVD and SSA before committing a new registration or update to the database. So the quantity of checks can be reflective of any new registrations and updates being ran through the voter registration system. Not every state runs the checks weekly but looking at yearly averages the states are on-track with averages, for example in 2023, in Arizona the total number of transactions was over 900 thousand, so current 2024 numbers are only slightly above last year’s average. While these numbers are higher than 2020 and 2022, voter registration numbers are not increasing at the same level as the number of HAVV checks, it is likely they are reflective of changes to system functionality and reporting, for both the state voter registration systems and the SSA.