Idaho Gov. Brad Little announced the roll-out of the Only Citizens Will Vote Act this week, a series of steps for governmental agencies to make sure non-citizens are not registered at the polls.
In a press release announcing the executive order, Little said “Left Coast states,” the Biden Administration and the “lawless open southern border” were eroding public trust in elections.
Some local entities in the U.S. allow non-citizens to vote in school boards or other municipal elections, but both the federal government and the Idaho constitution already specify only citizens are allowed to vote.
Over the last year, concerns over undocumented folks voting fraudulently have mostly come from Republican officials critical of current immigration policies.
“We have many safeguards in Idaho's elections to make sure things work smoothly but over time, we've actually seen those calls and concerns increase,” said Secretary of State Phil McGrane, citing questions about voter registration services government agencies providing assistance to non-citizens and the potential for unintended instances of non-citizens filling out voter forms.
“We've had county clerks reach out saying, what are we doing to ensure that this isn't a problem?” he said, adding instances of non-citizens registered to vote in Idaho are “very minimal.”
“Our elections are secure, and I am not concerned that we have any significant number of non-citizens even trying to register to vote."
The Secretary of State explained this order will be an opportunity to evaluate if any non-citizens are intentionally, or unintentionally, on voter rolls. The state already ensures voter rolls are up to date but the order adds a requirement to coordinate with the U.S. Department of Homeland security to check people’s citizenship status.
“That is the main call to action as well as us then reporting back on the work that we've done based on the executive order,” McGrane said.
The executive action does not come with additional funding and the new responsibilities will be rolled into the agency’s workload. The order also prevents state agencies from handing out voter registration paperwork to non-citizens.
“Both at the state and local level, election administrators have worked hard to have safe, secure and accessible elections,” said Jaclyn Kettler, a political scientist at Boise State University.
“Maintaining accurate voter registration rolls is a major challenge,” she said, as people pass away, move, or don’t realize they’ve changed precincts. But she added there is very little evidence of non-citizens successfully registering to vote and voting,
Kettler said people will likely react to the Only Citizens Will Vote executive order in line with their existing political views.
“It will either reinforce 'okay, good, we're doing things to prevent non-citizens from voting, that's important' or other folks are going to look and be like, 'this is unnecessary. This is just a political stunt',” she said.
Sam Martin, Public Affairs Chair at the Frank and Bethine Church Institute said she was disappointed by the order.
“The incident of voter fraud in Idaho is rare, as it is everywhere across the United States,” Martin said. “It’s a thing that just really doesn't happen. And when it does happen, it gets taken care of and it's usually on the margins where it doesn't make any real difference in the outcome of the election.”
“What it does is create suspicion in the system and promote a kind of ‘us versus them’ mentality,” she said. “It ultimately works as an effort to depress voter registration and voter turnout.”
“It's really hard to identify the loss from double and triple checking that the wrong people don't vote because that seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do”, Martin said, adding these kinds of initiatives come with a cost. “But the weakening in the system and the loss of confidence in the system and the missed voices, that's really hard to quantify.”
“Figuring out all the places to plug holes can make some sense. It's just the problem I think sometimes of killing the proverbial fly with the sledgehammer,” she added.
Seven states already have explicit language barring non-citizens from voting in their constitutions. Seven more will have ballot measures addressing citizenship voting requirements in the upcoming November election.
