Illegal voting by noncitizens is rare, yet Republicans are making it a major issue this election
Only U.S. citizens will be eligible to vote in this fall’s presidential and other top-tier elections. While that’s nothing new, the ability for non-citizens to register or vote has been getting a lot of attention lately.
Republicans have expressed concerns about the influx of immigrants at the US-Mexico border in recent years, the possibility that non-citizens will vote and they have taken measures in several states to address this problem, even though the instances in which non-citizens actually vote are rare.
GOP officials have reviewed voter rolls, issued executive orders and placed constitutional amendments on state ballots as part of an emphasis on thwarting noncitizen voting. Some Democrats argue that the measures could create obstacles for legal voters, are unnecessary and lead people to believe that the problem of noncitizen voting is worse than it really is.
A US Act of 1996 makes it illegal for noncitizens to vote in presidential or congressional elections. Violators can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. They can also be deported.
When people register to vote, they certify under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens. Federal law requires states to regularly update their voter rolls and remove anyone who is ineligible, a process that can identify immigrants who are in the country illegally.
No state constitution explicitly allows noncitizens to vote, and many states have laws prohibiting noncitizens from voting for state offices such as governor or attorney general. However, some municipalities in California, Maryland, and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia, do allow noncitizen voting in some local elections, such as for school board and city council.
Voting by non-citizens is rareStill, Republican officials have pointed to voter registration checks that turned up potential non-citizens.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said last week that more than 6,500 potential noncitizens have been removed from Texas voter rolls since 2021, including 1,930 with “a voter history” who were referred for investigation by the attorney general’s office. Texas has nearly 18 million registered voters.
Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in August that he had filed 138 potential prosecutions non-citizens who voted in a recent election and 459 others who registered but did not vote. Those numbers were higher than previous years’ ratings, but a small fraction of Ohio’s more than 8 million registered voters.
Alabama Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen recently announced that 3,251 people previously classified as non-citizens by the federal government are being prosecuted. switched to inactive status on the state’s voter registration rolls. They must provide proof of citizenship and fill out a form to vote in November. Alabama has more than 3 million registered voters.
In Georgia, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger found that 1,634 potential noncitizens tried to register to vote between 1997 and 2022, though election officials flagged them and no one registered. Georgia registered millions of other voters during that time.
According to a number of election administration experts, assessments of voter rolls show that current tools to flag voters without citizenship are working.
Arizona is an example of Republicans’ longstanding efforts to ban non-citizen voting.
Under a 2004 voter-approved initiative, Arizona required a driver’s license, birth certificate, passport or other similar document to approve an application for federal voter registration. But the The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona may not require proof of citizenship from people who wish to vote in federal elections.
The state responded by creating two classes of voters. For state and local elections, voters must provide proof of citizenship when they register or file with the state. But because that cannot be required in presidential and congressional elections, tens of thousands of voters who have not provided proof of citizenship are registered only for federal elections.
An August order from a divided U.S. Supreme Court will allow voter registration forms submitted without “documentary proof of citizenship” to be rejected by Arizona counties while litigation over the law continues. People will be able to register to vote in presidential and congressional elections using a different federal form that requires people to swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, with no proof required.
Republican-led legislatures in eight states have proposed constitutional amendments stated on their November ballots that only citizens should be allowed to vote.
Proposals in Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin would replace existing constitutional provisions that say “any” or “all” citizens may vote with new language that says “only” citizens may vote. Supporters argue that the current language does not necessarily exclude non-citizens from voting.
In Idaho and Kentucky, the proposed amendments would explicitly state that “No person who is not a citizen of the United States” shall be eligible to vote. Similar language won approval from voters in Louisiana two years ago.
Voters in North Dakota, Colorado, Alabama, Florida and Ohio passed amendments between 2018 and 2022 that limit voting rights to “only” citizens.
Although non-citizen voting is already prohibited by the state constitution, Republican Governor Jeff Landry of Louisiana continues to draw attention to the issue. He recently signed an executive order requiring government agencies that provide voter registration forms to include a written disclaimer stating that non-citizens are prohibited from voting.
In Georgia, Raffensperger last week required every polling place to post a sign in English and Spanish warning non-citizens that voting is illegal.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday created a special email account to report suspected election law violations, citing the state’s “significant growth in the non-U.S. population.”
In Wisconsin, Republicans have filed a pair of similar lawsuits in recent weeks challenging the state’s process for verifying whether a registered voter is a citizen. The lawsuits seek court orders requiring the state Board of Elections to conduct checks to ensure that no registered voters are noncitizens.
Republicans in North Carolina are suing the state’s election board for failing to enforce a new law designed to remove from the voter rolls people who claim exemption from jury service because they are not citizens.
Tennessee’s top elections office sent letters in June requesting proof of citizenship of more than 14,000 registered voters, though those who did not respond were not excluded from voting. The list was based on data from the state’s Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which has information on whether residents were U.S. citizens when they first contacted the department.
Republicans in Congress are pushing a bill known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Actthat require proof of citizenship to vote. During a press conference on the legislation this year, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., did not provide specific examples of noncitizens voting, but he stressed that it is a concern.
“We all know, intuitively, that there are a lot of illegal immigrants who vote in federal elections,” he said, “but that’s not something that’s easy to prove.”
The legislation passed by the Republican-led House largely along partisan lines in July, but has not yet reached a vote in the Democratic-led Senate. The Biden administration has said it strongly opposes it and that laws against noncitizen voting work.
“This bill would do nothing to protect our elections, but it would make it far more difficult for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters will be purged from the voter rolls,” the White House said in a statement.
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Associated Press reporters Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.