A federal appeals court panel ruled recently that Kansas can’t require voters to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling was based on a law passed in 2011 called the Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act.

The law contained three essential components:

1. Photo voter ID: Each voter must show photo identification each election, with certain specific exceptions.

2. Identification and security of advance ballots sent by mail: Voters who request advance ballots by mail must submit either their driver’s license numbers or copies of photographic identification documents.

3. Citizenship verification: Each person registering to vote must provide proof of U.S. citizenship. 

The law, which took effect in 2013, was ruled unconstitutional and violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and the National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as the “motor-voter law.”  

The panel incredibly ruled that asking a potential voter to prove they are a citizen at registration does “not justify the burden imposed on the right to vote.”

Americans for Citizen Voting, a 501 c4 organization I am proud to lead, recently conducted an electronic town hall with noted election law experts to combat the growing movement of allowing noncitizens to vote.

The Constitution never extends this right to noncitizens. Yet in places such as Chicago, San Francisco, Montpelier, Vt., and parts of Maryland, noncitizens are voting in local elections. And there is mounting pressure to extend voting privileges to those residing here illegally. Legislation has been introduced to allow noncitizens to vote in California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Texas. It’s being considered locally in cities such as Boston, New York City, Portland, Maine, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

One of those experts was J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. I also wrote about this issue for RedState earlier this year.

PILF released a groundbreaking report in 2018 called “Steeling the Vote” which chronicled the problem of noncitizens on the voting rolls in Pennsylvania and how “Motor Voter” helped facilitate a lot of those problems.

WHAT IS ‘MOTOR VOTER?’ The NVRA, commonly known as “Motor Voter,” requires each state to offer voter registration to any individual that applies for a driver’s license. This provision of the law requires the applicant to swear to his or her citizenship under penalty of perjury, but does not explicitly authorize (nor explicitly deny) the state’s ability to verify citizenship through formal documentation. Instead, the law provides that the states “may require only the minimum amount of information necessary to . . . enable State election officials to assess the eligibility of the applicant and to administer voter registration and other parts of the election process.” The honor system has proven to be inadequate. This honor system not only risks corrupting the voter rolls, it exposes noncitizens to potential legal difficulties later in life…According to one Philadelphia City Commissioner, the number of noncitizens who entered the voter registration system during the last two decades exceeded 100,000..

PILF’s report revealed 139 individuals, in just Allegheny County alone, who reported to the state they were ineligible to vote because they were noncitizens.

Amazingly, these ineligible voters had been on the rolls since 2006! These permanent residents had a great incentive to self-report:

The vast majority of these (71 percent) came forward with the hope their records did not hinder or derail their plans for citizenship naturalization. The remainder admitted their status after a typically unrelated list maintenance action occurred. These records further show that 27 percent of self reporting noncitizens cast at least one ballot prior to their admission of ineligibility and removal from the rolls. The data presented in this report requires an important caveat. The noncitizens found on the rolls in Allegheny County are only the ones who self-reported their noncitizen status to election officials. Given the twenty-year period during which the so called registration “glitch” persisted, one thing is for sure: the total number of noncitizens who found their way into Pennsylvania’s voter registration system far exceeds the number of noncitizens who have outed themselves to date.

Below is an example given during our townhall of a permanent resident who was deported because the California DMV purposely marked her as a citizen when she received a driver’s license. She thought she was eligible to vote after she started receiving election reminders in the mail.

Attempts by various states to require registrants to provide documentary proof of citizenship during registration for federal elections have been thwarted by lawsuits brought by left-leaning groups. Like other states, Pennsylvania requires applicants to merely check a box in order to “prove” their citizenship status. In other words, it’s nothing more than the honor system. If a noncitizen checks “Yes” to the citizenship question in any setting, they are simply enrolled without any further verification, even if they presented a Green Card to identify themselves at the time of
registration.

The Democrats are on a mad push for all mail-in voting (which will undoubtedly include noncitizen permanent residents) which, of course, is ripe for fraud.

Can you blame them? Their presidential candidate is in the early stages of dementia; he’s credibly being accused of sexually assaulting a former aide; and he’s campaigning from his basement because his handlers are terrified he’ll say something unintelligible.

We know Democrats are cheaters and now they brazenly admit it:

We must be vigilant this election cycle. Desperate times take drastic measures. If there is a ballot initiative in your state to codify within your state constitution that only citizens can vote, I implore you to get involved and contact your state representative and state senator.