GOP efforts to crack down on noncitizen voting extend to state ballot measures

Eight states will have constitutional amendments backed by Republican lawmakers on the November ballot designed to make clear that only American citizens can vote in elections in those states.

But it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections in those states and at the federal level, and it rarely happens.

Election experts warn it’s one of the ways Republicans at the national and state levels are seeking to drive the unsubstantiated narrative that noncitizens are voting in large numbers in ways that could affect the outcome of elections up and down the ballot amid a heated presidential race.

The efforts could stoke people’s fears and play on their misconceptions about voting in U.S. elections, they say, and indirectly legitimize claims by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans regarding a problem that is largely nonexistent.

“These proposed constitutional amendments are aimed really at two things: preventing local governments in those states from allowing non-U.S. citizens to vote in local elections, and advancing this false narrative that non-U.S. citizens are somehow participating in U.S. elections in large numbers, which is totally unsupported by any evidence or facts,” said Jonathan Diaz, the director of voting advocacy at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, has long made false claims that noncitizens are voting in elections and that Democrats have helped them enter the country to cast those ballots. The Republican National Committee’s election integrity campaign, which aims to recruit 100,000 poll monitors and lawyers for the upcoming election, has also emphasized noncitizen voting as a danger that could imperil the results this fall.

Meanwhile, GOP officials in several states have recently purged their voter rolls with the goal of removing noncitizens, while House Speaker Mike Johnson has pushed legislation that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.

In addition, Republican-controlled legislatures in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin have referred constitutional amendments to this year’s ballot that seek to make it explicitly illegal for noncitizens to vote in state and local elections. Supporters argue that the amendments serve as a way to get ahead of any potential voting problems.

No state constitution in the U.S. allows noncitizens to vote. And while certain cities and municipalities in three states, as well as Washington, D.C., have allowed noncitizens to vote in some local elections, none are located in the eight states with these ballot measures.

The proposed amendments in Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin would effectively modify existing language in those states’ constitutions so that the documents read that “only” citizens can vote, as opposed to current language that states that “every citizen” or “all citizens” can do so.

In Idaho and Kentucky, the proposals would insert language in those states’ constitutions stating that “no person who is not a citizen of the United States” can vote.

In these eight states, lawmakers control the constitutional amendment process, not citizens.

Lawmakers in those states who worked to pass the legislative referrals, as well as groups supporting them, say their efforts are about further safeguarding elections.

“We’re doing it to protect your rights as a citizen. We’re doing it to protect your right to vote,” Wisconsin Republican state Sen. Julian Bradley said last week at a press conference arranged by Americans for Citizen Voting, a nonprofit group that has helped organize the legislative efforts in these eight states.

Bradley, who helped lead the legislative effort in Wisconsin to place the measure on the ballot, added that it seeks to “shore up another piece where people are concerned about who’s voting and how they’re voting.”

North Carolina Republican state Sen. Brad Overcash said that the amendments merely “empower” people in these eight states “to make the decision to amend their own constitution, to declare that citizens, and only citizens, are allowed to vote.”

Jack Tomczak, the vice president of outreach for Americans for Citizen Voting, didn’t dispute that noncitizen voting — particularly in local elections in these eight states — is virtually nonexistent, saying in an interview that the efforts are instead “about vigilance.”

“We, and legislators who sponsor these, are getting ahead of fixing a problem that maybe has not reared its head as much in these states,” he said. “It’s not like it’s happening everywhere and it must be stopped immediately. But preemption is not a bad thing.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has worked alongside Americans for Citizen Voting in supporting the ballot efforts, added that the measures mark “another way of building trust in the election process.”

But voting rights experts point to that kind of reasoning as a plain acknowledgement that these measures seek to address a problem that isn’t widespread.

“They play on peoples’ fears and misconceptions about the electoral process and who is participating in elections to stoke this kind of anxiety about whether our elections can be trusted,” said Diaz. “When the average person sees something like this on their ballot, I think it would be a reasonable reaction to think, ‘Oh, my God, they were allowed to vote before? Have we been allowing non-U.S. citizens to vote all this time?’ And of course we haven’t — it is already illegal.”

The proposed amendments “perpetuate a misimpression that noncitizens are currently voting,” said Bree Grossi Wilde, the executive director of the nonpartisan State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

In the case of Wisconsin, she said, that’s because the ballot measure doesn’t mention that the state constitution already includes “citizen” in the language about who has the right to vote in Wisconsin. (None of the other seven measures do either).

More broadly, that could help further sow doubt about the legitimacy of the electoral system, which Trump and his allies continue to spread heading in the 2024 election.

“Whether or not it’s true, which it isn’t,” Diaz said of widespread noncitizen voting, the presence of these ballot measures risks “creating doubt in the mind of the public and undermines the electoral system and possibly makes it easier for the public to swallow attempts to overturn the results if [Trump] loses.”

Diaz and Grossi Wilde also wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the measures — particularly in the crucial battleground states of Wisconsin and North Carolina — could serve to drive Republican turnout by drawing further attention to an issue that’s important to the GOP base.

While Americans for Citizen Voting said it has no formal or informal relationship with the Trump campaign or the RNC, its chairman, Paul Jacob, said at a recent press conference that he hopes the ballot measures will help improve voter turnout.

“I see people talk about this as a turnout issue, and there’s a negative connotation to that, and it strikes me that we want people to come out and vote, and the best way to get people to come out and vote is to give them something they really want to vote for,” Jacob said. “So that part of this as a turnout issue I want to just embrace, because this is something voters care about.”