this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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  • Widespread Errors: An expanded federal tool for identifying noncitizens on voter rolls is making persistent mistakes, particularly in assessing citizenship for people born outside the U.S.
  • Banned From Voting: In Missouri, state officials told local clerks to temporarily ban flagged voters from casting ballots, even though hundreds turned out to be citizens.
  • Texas Confusion: As errors emerged in SAVE data, local clerks said the state hadn’t provided them with clear guidance and worried about disenfranchising eligible citizens.
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[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 8 points 31 minutes ago

"Mistakenly"

[–] Armand1@lemmy.world 15 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Given that only 22 noncitizens over the course of like 10 years (can't remember the exact statistic) tried to vote, the way to get the best accuracy would be to just hard code the answer to "yes, they can vote". Then you get over 99.99% accuracy.

[–] pageflight@piefed.social 7 points 53 minutes ago

From the article:

At least seven states with a total of about 35 million registered voters have publicly reported the results of running their voter rolls through the system. Those searches have identified roughly 4,200 people — about 0.01% of registered voters — as noncitizens. This aligns with previous findings that noncitizens rarely register to vote.

[–] CobraChicken3000@lemmy.ca 92 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

It's a feature, not a bug.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

This has happened all over there US already. Someone challenges your right to vote and it's your job to prove your eligibility. Can't show up to your appointment? No ID? No bills going to that address? Only have a PO Box address? No voting for you!

[–] Virtvirt588@lemmy.world 32 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

This is how political cleansing begins. Once the system is turned on, voting for anything slightly left will cast you as a criminal of the state.

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 15 points 3 hours ago

Certainly they won't use years of collected metadata from social networks about political sentiment, right? ...right?

[–] danekrae@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

And still, americans believe the democrats will win... Even after everything in the past, everything being said in the present, they're still only going to protest.

[–] ruekk@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

What do you want Americans to do? Start an open insurrection? Do you really realize how many thousand of people would die the instant a semi-armed civilian led force tried to fight back?

[–] Tehbaz@lemmy.wtf 3 points 2 hours ago

It's a case of die standing up or on your knees in a 'big beautiful' concentration camp. A peaceful general strike and spending boycott would be a start, but nobody seems to be willing to make that sacrifice until it's too late.

[–] KelvarCherry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I'm genuinely losing my mind at this take. For the last 13 months we've seen thousands of human people walked to their death -- watched planes of human beings take off and return empty; and still half of the comments I see that suggest taking action beyond peaceful marches and waiting for the 2026 midterms get this "smarter than thou" smug response from people, some claiming to be 50501 liberals. Sometimes it's, like, 15 lines and a song quote; with the occasional ALL CAPS "DO NOT TAKE THE BAIT".

People are dying, folks; now. Come to reality. A clash with ICE, especially in the first months when they were untrained and barely armed, wouldn't have accelerated anything--because we didn't have that and yet we are here. This mythical "Insurrection Act" invocation wouldn't have caused the terrorism we are witnessing now; nor the deployments in LA or Portland. Yes, people will die in clashes with the state; but what's the alternative? Letting people die in raids from the state? We watched camera footage with video of pro-Palestinian activists getting disappeared. We've seen masked agents killing hundreds of people across the states, every month. We've seen them raid neighborhoods, and pull people into vans. We've seen our police watch, do nothing, then arrest the bystanders for "causing a disturbance". Every. Day.

The part of me that is clinging onto some partial hope in human nature wants to blame this widespread passivity propaganda for the reason it took a year to have the resistance effort in Minneapolis, which there had been nothing like until that point. Really, though, I sense the real reason behind these arguments and the wider inaction, is that the targets of ICE have been predominantly people of color, and mainly Hispanic folks. So, too, were the kids in cages through the first Trump and Biden administrations.

I understand that Holocaust poem in a depth that I just didn't understand before. I understand the Holocaust documentaries and testimonies I've watched in a depth I hadn't gotten before.

You aren't outsmarting the Republicans by standing back as they kill thousands; tens-of-thousands; hundreds-of-thousands of people of color. You're giving them exactly what they wanted: A “second American Revolution”; [white]-bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

[–] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 11 points 3 hours ago

"Mistakes".

Cue Ron Howard voiceover.

[–] infinitevalence@discuss.online 30 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

thats the whole point, oops, you cant vote, sucks you were voting against us anyway....

[–] VivianRixia@piefed.social 0 points 3 hours ago

But also, oops, you cant vote, sucks that you were going to vote for us anyway

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Repeatedly checking the tool results in massive numbers of mistakes.

If you check the same person twice, the odds of a false positive increase exponentially.

[–] LibertyLizard@quokk.au 5 points 2 hours ago

It's almost like there's almost zero non-citizens voting or something...

Not that there's even a need to prevent them from voting.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 hours ago

Turns out, they were just using this meme as their requirements document.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 10 points 4 hours ago

Voting Blue? No Vote For You!

[–] Rhoeri@piefed.social 5 points 3 hours ago

As it was intended to do.