28% of US Voter Verifications Have NO MATCH at Social Security Administration

28% of US Voter Verifications Have NO MATCH at Social Security Administration according to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system. This system, established under the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), allows states to verify certain voter registration information for federal elections when applicants do not provide a driver’s license or state ID number.

Under HAVA, states must maintain statewide voter registration lists and verify identity for new registrants. If a registrant provides the last four digits of their Social Security number (SSN) instead of a driver’s license, states can query the SSA’s HAVV system with the applicant’s name, date of birth, and those last four SSN digits. The SSA responds with whether the information matches its records (indicating the person exists and is alive/deceased), yields no match, or cannot be processed.

According to SSA’s public open data on HAVV transactions (available at ssa.gov/open/havv), cumulative figures from January 2011 to the present show a significant portion of queries result in “no match.” Recent analyses, including a February 2026 article from The Gateway Pundit citing SSA totals, report that approximately 28.8% of all HAVV submissions since 2011—around 28.1 million out of roughly 97-103 million processed transactions—returned as no match. For 2025 specifically, the no-match rate was reported at about 13% (318,217 out of 2.37 million submissions).

These no-match results do not indicate voter fraud, non-citizenship, or ineligible registration. Fact-checks and explanations from sources like PolitiFact (in a 2024 analysis of similar claims) clarify that HAVV data tracks verification requests, not individual people or successful registrations. High no-match rates can stem from:

• Data entry errors or inconsistencies (e.g., name variations, typos in birth dates, or mismatched formatting).
• Use of partial SSNs (last four digits), which are not unique identifiers—up to tens of thousands of people can share the same last four digits.
• Repeated submissions of the same voter data (a 2010 SSA inspector general audit found cases where voter data was resubmitted multiple times).
• Legitimate applicants whose SSA records lack matching details or are outdated.

The system is used primarily for registrants without driver’s licenses, a subset that may include younger voters, non-drivers, or those using alternative IDs. No-match does not prevent registration in most cases; states follow up or use alternative verification under HAVA guidelines.

Broader context on voter verification shows low rates of confirmed issues like non-citizen voting. Recent state audits using expanded tools (e.g., DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements or SAVE program, which incorporated SSA data in 2025) have found non-citizen registrations at fractions of a percent—such as 0.015% in Texas and 0.014% in Louisiana. Experts note SSA citizenship data can be incomplete (e.g., not always updated for naturalized citizens), leading to potential errors if used for final eligibility determinations.

The 28% figure highlights challenges in automated identity verification using limited data but does not equate to widespread fraud or invalid voters on rolls. Election officials and federal agencies continue to refine processes amid ongoing debates over voter integrity measures like the proposed SAVE Act.