CNN
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GOP-led states are barreling ahead in a push to require voters to show documents proving their citizenship when registering, as efforts by President Donald Trump and his congressional allies to enact the mandate nationwide show little likelihood of success.
Twenty-two states have considered proof-of-citizenship legislation this year, with Wyoming last month becoming the latest to enact such a policy, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election-related legislation. That’s a dramatic increase from the six states that weighed these kinds of bills just four years ago – underscoring an intensifying campaign by some Republicans to elevate an issue that voting experts say is virtually non-existent – foreigners infiltrating the US voting rolls. In recent years, hard-right activists have claimed, without evidence, that voting by noncitizens is fueling fraud and affecting election results.
The state-by-state legislative push comes as national Republicans from Trump on down have made the proposal a top agenda item, even as those federal efforts face serious legal, legislative and logistical obstacles.
The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives last week passed its own proof-of-citizenship bill, reprising an effort that began last year. However, the bill faces a near-impossible hurdle in the Senate, where Republicans lack the votes to overcome an expected filibuster by Democrats.
Last month, Trump – who has made repeated and baseless claims that fraud contributed to his 2020 defeat – sought to single-handedly change how local governments and states carry out elections with a sweeping executive order that included several provisions aimed to boost proof of citizenship requirements, amid attacks on other state policies for how elections are administered.
Several lawsuits are challenging Trump’s order, arguing that his actions amount to an unconstitutional presidential overreach into elections. And the administration is now claiming in court filings that Trump’s directive that a federal elections commission do what it can to encourage the adoption of proof of citizenship requirements was more of a “proposal” that would need to go through many more procedural steps – including gaining the support of at least one Democrat on the relevant commission – before becoming reality.
But even if it ends up lacking any real teeth, the executive order is a clear signal to Republican state legislators, voting rights experts told CNN.
“The president is clearly telecasting that this is what he wants his allies across the country to be advancing,” said Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election-related legislation.
It’s already against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and those who do risk jail time and deportation. Currently in most states, voters confirm their citizenship by signing a sworn statement. Critics argue that requiring people provide proof, through documents such as birth certificates or passports, to register to vote could disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans who might lack ready access to those documents and could be improperly kicked off the voting rolls.
One recent survey conducted by SSRS for the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, Voting Rights Lab and other groups showed that roughly 9% of eligible voters – estimated at more than 21 million people – would have a difficult time obtaining the required documents, and 2% lack access to them altogether.
It is rare for noncitizens to vote. An audit of Iowa’s rolls of 2.1 million registered voters released last month found 277 noncitizens on the rolls and concluded that 35 had cast ballots that were ultimately counted in the 2024 general election.
Litigation over a Kansas attempt to implement a 2011 mandate in that state revealed that 31,000 Kansans were denied registration because of failure to provide a citizenship document in the roughly three years the law was in force.
Opponents say the GOP-led efforts could suppress voting, particularly for poor and older voters and create additional obstacles for women who change their names after marriage because their birth certificates or other documents establishing their citizenship might not match their current last names. Republican supporters of the bill that recently passed the US House said states can help affected people overcome those barriers by choosing to include additional records, such as marriage certificates, to the list of documents they will accept in verifying citizenship.
The effort to pass proof-of-citizenship statutes around the country is advancing alongside a campaign by conservative activists to change state constitutions to require US citizenship to vote, although it already is illegal for noncitizens to do so in presidential and congressional contests. (Washington, DC, and some municipalities in three states – California, Maryland and Vermont – have allowed permanent, legal residents to vote on local issues.)
Eight states last year approved measures adding a citizenship requirement to their constitutions, bringing the total number of states with explicit prohibitions in their constitutions to 15, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The challenge in enacting the mandate is that most states, under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, are obligated to accept, at least for federal elections, a federal registration form that has not included citizenship documents among its requirements.
As a result, Arizona – which first pursued a citizenship mandate more than two decades ago – set up a dual system for elections to implement its proof-of-citizenship law, establishing a separate a “federal only” list of voters who have not met the state’s mandate and so are barred from voting for state and local offices, but can vote in federal elections.
New Hampshire, like Wyoming, is exempt from the relevant provisions of the 1993 federal statute because it allows people to register on the same day that they vote. New Hampshire has a new proof-of-citizenship requirement that was in place for elections for the first time last month and will apply to all elections, including those for federal office, in a state that plays a key role in presidential politics.
Reegan DePasquale, who moved to Hampton, New Hampshire, from Florida last December, said she recently became ensnared by the new provisions. She said she showed up to register and vote in her town’s March 11 election at roughly 5 p.m. – after finishing work and picking up her elementary-age children from their after-school activities.
But DePasquale said she wasn’t aware of the law’s details and had only her driver’s license and US Global Entry card in her wallet as proof of her identity. Given the late hour – and realizing that she still needed to feed her kids dinner and get them settled for the evening – she gave up on retrieving her passport from her home and returning to vote before polls closed.
“It was frustrating,” DePasquale told CNN. “I just don’t carry around my passport and birth certificate with me.”
In all, at least 96 people appeared to have had problems voting during that day’s election because of the law, according to the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights – a coalition that monitored activity at nearly two dozen polling places.
Liz Tentarelli, president of the New Hampshire League of Women Voters, said lawmakers in other places should view the Granite State’s recent experience as a “cautionary tale.”
“There will be people turned away, and if that’s what a state wants, it’s a mistake,” she said. “We should not be creating laws to disenfranchise.”
New Hampshire state Rep. Bob Lynn, a Republican who authored the bill that requires proof of citizenship, said voting appeared to go smoothly for most residents. “It’s too bad that you didn’t familiarize yourself in advance with what you needed to do” to cast a ballot, he said of cases like DePasquale’s. “That’s what the law is.”
The new law also prohibits the use of sworn statements, which attest to a voter’s qualifications if they show up at the polls without the required documentation.
“We shouldn’t have a trust-me situation for voting,” Lynn, the former chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court, told CNN. “If you forget your ATM card and go to the bank and want to make a withdrawal, the bank isn’t going to let you sign an affidavit, saying ‘My name is really John Smith, and I really have an account here.’”
New Hampshire lawmakers are now weighing another bill drafted by Lynn that would extend the proof-of-citizenship mandate to those who vote by mail.
Some of the country’s most populous states also are moving to change their laws.
One bill advancing in the Florida legislature would require first-time registrants to verify their citizenship status with one of seven forms of identification, including a birth certificate, passport or naturalization document. But proof of citizenship also would be needed to make changes to existing voter registrations, such as updating an address.
And in Texas, the state Senate this month approved a bill that would require proof-of-citizenship documents to register to vote. The measure would apply not just to new voters but to the 18 million people already on the Texas voting rolls, by mandating that election officials use federal and state databases to determine the citizenship status of existing voters.
“Most of us agree that US elections are for US citizens,” Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the bill’s author, said during floor debate this month. “However, the federal government has prevented states from requiring proof of citizenship at the point of registration.”
Those whose citizenship could not be verified would receive a “limited federal ballot,” allowing them to vote only for congressional candidates. Under the proposal, those voters would be barred from participating in presidential, state and local elections.
The “limited federal ballot” provision is likely to become a flashpoint in legal battles should the Texas measure become law. Courts blocked a similar attempt by Arizona last election cycle to exclude people who can’t prove their citizenship from casting ballots for president, though the litigation hinged on the federal form not requiring the documents, which Trump now seeks to change in his executive order.
In earlier rounds of lawsuits over Arizona’s requirement, the US Supreme Court has mandated that states accept for federal elections a generic voter registration form offered by the US Election Assistance Commission or EAC, which currently does not require documents proving citizenship. Trump’s new executive order orders the agency to amend the form, with the goal of making it easier for states to implement the requirement.
However, as the Justice Department tries to fend off the legal challenges to Trump’s directives, it’s arguing that the commission will have to take multiple additional steps before the form is changed to include the requirement. Among them is getting the approval of three of the four commissioners, according to a declaration from the commission’s executive director filed in court. Two of the four EAC commissioners are Democrats who are not expected to support such a move and even if Trump were to fire them, the law creating the EAC stipulates that two of its four members be of the same party of the House and Senate minority leaders – i.e. Democrats.
Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, said Texas’ effort to limit who can vote in presidential elections runs counter to federal law. “The EAC gets to change the federal form, not Texas,” he said.
The various efforts under way to require proof of citizenship means “eligible American citizens will be disenfranchised in very large numbers,” Morales-Doyle added. “And that is bad policy.”
