In the months before last year’s election, Alabama removed valid voters from the rolls after wrongly tagging them as noncitizens. Tennessee’s secretary of state told 14,000 voters they had to prove their citizenship. And officials debatedwhetherhundreds of thousands of Arizonans could vote in state races after they discovered they were missing citizenship documentation.
More episodes like those are likely to lie ahead throughout the country.
Republicans in Congress and state legislatures are charging forward with plans to require Americans to prove they are citizens as they say they seek to crack down on noncitizen voting — an almost nonexistent problem.
Voting by noncitizens is already illegal in all state and federal elections, and requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship could make it harder for millions of legitimate voters to cast ballots. Driver’s licenses and other state IDs can be used only for people who provided proof of citizenship to get those IDs, so some people will need to track down other documents.
Many people do not have ready access to birth certificates or passports, including women who changed their names when they got married, rural residents who live far from government offices where birth records are kept, and people who lost documents in fires or floods….
Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, with academic studies finding just a handful of examples out of tens of millions of ballots cast over many years.
This year, laws took effect in Louisiana and New Hampshire requiring people to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The laws are modeled on one in Arizona, where officials continue to struggle with administering a measure voters approved 20 years ago.
The Wyoming House last month passed a bill requiring proof of citizenship, and lawmakers in 13 other states have introduced similar legislation, according to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab. Republicans control the legislatures and governor’s office in eight of those states, boosting the legislation’s prospects.
Critics warn that longtime voters — including those who ardently support Trump — could find it harder to vote as more measures are passed and they discover they can’t track down their birth certificate or other documents proving their citizenship….