Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said the state will not send voter data to a federal citizenship-verification database cleared by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 6-3 ruling on Friday, Sept. 25, lifted restrictions on the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known as SAVE. The system lets states voluntarily upload voter rolls so the federal government can check them against citizenship and immigration records. The Tuesday, Nov. 3 general election is 39 days away.

Read, in a statement posted by his office, said Oregon will not participate in a system he called flawed and likely to strip eligible voters of their right to vote.

The decision keeps Oregon's all-mail election on its current track. The state has more than 3 million registered voters and has not run a traditional in-person election in more than two decades, according to The Oregonian.

Error rates drew scrutiny

The SAVE system's accuracy has been questioned since the Trump administration overhauled it in 2025 by linking it with Social Security Administration records and allowing bulk queries. Since May 2025, the updated system has verified more than 65 million voters across 26 states and flagged 28,635 as potential noncitizens, OPB reported.

Texas tested the system statewide. The state ran its full voter list of 18 million through SAVE, which flagged 2,724 as potential noncitizens. About 20% of those flagged were later found to be citizens and reinstated, according to a Texas secretary of state press release cited by OPB.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of three dissenters, wrote that "the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm" the government faces when blocked from using the system, according to SCOTUSblog.

Federal pressure on Oregon

The ruling is the latest clash between the Trump administration and state election officials. In July 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a seven-page letter to Read warning that Oregon elections leaders could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly allowed noncitizens to vote, The Oregonian reported.

Read responded in August by directing local election officials to proceed under current Oregon law. At an Oregon Votes Town Hall in Bend in April, he had told attendees that the federal government's repeated attempts to control who gets to vote were unprecedented and that Oregon would hold a free and fair election in November.

Oregon's voter registration deadline is Oct. 13. The Secretary of State's office recommends returning ballots at official drop boxes or mailing them no later than Oct. 27.