The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to allow the use of a federal citizenship database to screen voters ahead of the midterm elections. The administration is currently blocked from rolling out the tool, which would check voter information against Department of Homeland Security records. The emergency application marks the latest legal development in the fight over voting procedures, even as some states begin sending out ballots.

If the justices allow the administration to proceed, states could use the database to verify citizenship and Social Security records. Democracy Forward, which represents the challengers, argues the stakes are high: millions of Americans' sensitive personal information and the integrity of elections are on the line just weeks before the midterm elections. The request follows previous attempts to impose new screening on mail-in ballots.

On Sunday, Trump administration lawyers asked the justices to allow the U.S. Postal Service to move ahead with a plan to impose new screening on ballots sent through the mail. A group of Democratic state attorneys general and voting rights organizations will respond to that filing by Wednesday, arguing the plan violates the Constitution by allowing the executive to intrude on state and congressional authority. The administration has said the Postal Service is acting lawfully.

The new application focuses on the legality of an expansion of the Department of Homeland Security database known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. The government describes the database as an online service that enables users to verify a person's citizenship status, often within seconds. Voting rights groups sued last year to challenge the administration's overhaul of the database, arguing it was illegally transformed into a nationwide citizenship bank that could be used to purge voter rolls.

They argue errors in the data could disenfranchise valid voters. On Friday, a divided panel of federal appeals court judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia agreed to keep in place a temporary freeze on access to the database.