by Fred Lucas
State lawmakers have said they believe referendum initiatives aimed at ensuring that only citizens vote will win “overwhelming” approval — including in two key swing states.
North Carolina and Wisconsin, where polls in the presidential race are close and were close in the last state election, will be vote on this matterOther states that hold citizen-only referendums include Republican states: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina.
“Most people in our state believe that only American citizens can vote. So they already believe that’s the case. They believe that’s the way it should be, and they’ll have a chance to speak out on that on November 5th,” Wisconsin Sen. Julian Bradley, R-Wisconsin, he told The Daily Signal after the press conference on Wednesday.
Bradley and other lawmakers from several states traveled to Washington, D.C., to promote legislative initiatives at an event sponsored by Americans for Citizen Voting.
All this comes as Congress considers adding a House-passed bill requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration purposes under the spending bill.
Some municipalities and counties across the country have granted noncitizens the right to vote in local elections, such as mayoral or school board elections. Election security advocates have raised concerns about the ability of local governments to maintain separate voter rolls to prevent them from voting in state and federal elections as well.
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and in most states. However, several states allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and other benefits, while also providing them with ample opportunity to register to vote illegally in federal elections, critics note.
In the Wisconsin legislature, all political parties voted to put the initiative on the ballot, but Bradley said the initiative received 76 percent support among voters.
“I hope it beats that, but I’ll take 76 percent, especially if you look at a battleground state like Wisconsin. In 2018, the gubernatorial election was decided by 20,000 votes, in 2020, the presidential election, in 2016, in 2022, I think our attorney general, our secretary of state, a lot of state elections were decided by 20,000 votes or less,” Bradley added. “So to be able to ask people a question that could be overwhelmingly decided is a big deal.”
In most of the eight states, the ballot provisions would amend state constitutions to provide that “any” citizen may vote and that “only” citizens may vote.
“It’s important because we’ve seen some court cases where the term ‘anyone’ has been used as a lenient term,” North Carolina state Sen. Brad Overcash, a Republican, told The Daily Signal. “So we’ll have a chance to change that from ‘anyone’ to ‘only.’”
Overcash predicts the bill will pass easily in North Carolina, even though many elections in the state have gone at similar speed.
“Even when we introduced it in the legislature, there was some resistance from some Democrats, but it passed on a bipartisan basis,” Overcash said. “I think voters will overwhelmingly support it.”
Georgia has no legislative initiative, but already has citizenship verification, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he said.
He noted that Fair Fight Action, an organization founded by two-time unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams, and the liberal group Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda sued to prevent citizenship verification in Georgia. Georgia won both cases.
“We primarily used the Department of Driver Services. The beauty of Driver Services is that they are Real ID compliant, so they have to check citizenship,” Raffensperger told The Daily Signal. “They actually do a lot of the background work to determine whether the person meets the requirements, whether they are a legal citizen.”
“We did a citizenship audit. We found about 1,600 people, voters, who tried to register but couldn’t verify citizenship,” Raffensperger said. “We’re doing our second audit right now. We should have the results soon.”
As I noted in my book “The myth of restricting voting rights“A number of cases involving foreigners registering to vote and voting in previous elections have been reviewed.
The two Georgia groups are not the only left-wing organizations opposing measures aimed at preventing non-citizens from voting.
The Brennan Center — a liberal think tank based at New York University that regularly opposes election security measures such as voter ID requirements and generally denies election irregularities — also opposes additional citizen-only voting measures.
“It’s worth saying again that the idea of universal suffrage for non-citizens is a lie,” said Brennan Center President Michael Waldman wrote last month on the organization’s website. “Urban legend. It’s simply not true. States have many systems in place to prevent this from happening. It’s illegal for non-citizens to vote four times, and the reality is that it happens very rarely.”
Meanwhile, many House Republicans are calling on the Speaker of the House Mike JohnsonR-La., to include SAVE Act in the Act on collective expenditure at the end of the fiscal year.
Abbreviation of Protecting Americans’ Voting Rights ActThe SAVE Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 — the “Mobile Voter Act” — to require states to obtain proof of U.S. citizenship before anyone can register to vote.
Asked about the push to include the legislation in the omnibus bill, Raffensperger told The Daily Signal: “That’s a question for Congress.”
He added:
I just believe that we need to make sure that only Americans vote in our elections. I think Georgia is a great model.
Other state lawmakers did not mince their words.
“I would like elected officials to make a formal statement that we want noncitizens to vote in our elections so people can see what they are really doing,” Oklahoma state Sen. Shane Jett, a Republican, said at a news conference. “We have a balanced budget amendment in Oklahoma. A lot of people who didn’t support that amendment weren’t invited to the Capitol by their constituents who wanted them to go home and think about their life choices. So make a formal statement.”
South Carolina state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, a Republican, said ensuring only citizens vote could be worth a potential government shutdown.
“If Democrats want to shut down the federal government because they allow non-citizens to vote, I think that’s a lost cause,” Kimbrell said, adding:
Let them do it. You can’t blame Speaker Johnson for shutting down the government if the Democrats in the Senate refuse to defend the integrity of the election. There’s overwhelming support for these referendums, overwhelming support for the SAVE Act, if you really hear what’s in it. When you talk about defending citizen-only voting, both parties, those are double-digit margins.
Previous referendums on the issue have fared well in other states. In 2022, constitutional amendments requiring citizenship to vote were approved by 73% of voters in Louisiana and 77% in Ohio, according to BallotpediaIn 2020, similar constitutional amendments were approved by 79% of voters in Florida, 77% in Alabama and 62% in blue-leaning Colorado. In 2018, 65% of voters in North Dakota approved such an amendment.
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Fred Lucas is the chief news correspondent and head of the Investigative Reporting Project at The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Suffrage Restriction: The Left’s Attack on Fair Elections.” Send an email to Fred.
Photo by “Voters” Liz West.CC BY 2.0
