Votebeat

Thousands of Arizona voters received letters asking if they’d moved. Here’s why.

2026-09-03T22:30:00+00:00

This story was co-published with the Arizona Mirror, an independent, nonprofit news outlet that covers Arizona politics and government and is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. Sign up for the Arizona Mirror’s free newsletter here.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Kimberly Dorris wasn’t expecting to see a letter from the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in her mailbox on Monday.

Dorris, 59, had just voted by mail in Arizona’s July 21 primary election from her Scottsdale address. So she was surprised to open the notice and read “HAVE YOU MOVED?” at the top. The letter went on to inform her that county officials had received information suggesting her address may no longer be current.

Dorris wasn’t alone. Thousands of Arizonans have received similar notices in recent days, even though many have not moved. More than a dozen told Votebeat and the Arizona Mirror that they were longtime voters who had lived in their homes for years or even decades.

Officials said the notices generally do not cancel a voter’s registration or impact voting eligibility. But anyone who received one should check to make sure their address is correct.

If it is, nothing needs to be done. If it isn’t, you should get in touch with local election officials to correct it.

The confusing mailing appears to have stemmed from flaws in state and some county officials’ implementation of a new state law. Here’s what to know.

What does the new state law say?

The law requires Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, to compare the state’s voter registration database to the state’s driver’s license database each month. His staffers are then required to inform county recorders if they find discrepancies in a voter’s residential address or citizenship status.

Supporters of the law, which passed as House Bill 2243 in 2022, said its purpose is to improve maintenance of the voter rolls and catch ineligible voters, including people who had moved to a new address. In a May 2022 letter to then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a coalition of conservative groups wrote that the law would ensure it was “easy to vote, and hard to cheat” in Arizona.

But opponents worried it could disenfranchise some voters and noted that the state already had voter list maintenance measures in place.

Ducey, a Republican, ultimately vetoed an early iteration of the bill, saying the wording was too vague and could lead to “bad actors” attempting to disqualify voters for discriminatory reasons. But a second attempt, penned by then-Rep. Jake Hoffman of Queen Creek, earned his signature at the very end of the 2022 legislative session. Hoffman, a Republican and a leader of the state legislature’s far-right Freedom Caucus, is now a state senator.

Democrats said the underlying bill was still “very problematic.” Several voting rights groups immediately challenged it in court, delaying its implementation until earlier this year.

I haven’t moved. Why did I receive a letter?

The issue comes down to what counts as a discrepancy between the state’s voter registration and driver’s license databases.

When staff at the secretary of state’s office compared the two data sets, the voter registration database flagged minor variations in voters’ addresses as potential changes that needed to be reported to local election officials.

For instance, a voter might have an address that includes an apartment or unit number. If that’s listed in one database as “Unit 1,” and in another as “# 1,” that voter would be flagged. Many voters whose addresses had not changed were therefore included in the report that the secretary’s office sent to county recorders.

Thousands of Arizona voters recently received notices such as this one, dated July 31, 2026. Some of the letters, which are linked to a new state law, went to voters who hadn’t moved because of flaws in state officials’ address comparison process, sparking confusion.

Judy Keane, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, said the report also caught voters with small address differences, such as “lane” versus “LN,” and abbreviated street directional prefixes, such as “N” versus “North.”

“The notices were not sent in error, nor were they the result of a mistake by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office,” she said in a statement. Keane added that her office, headed by Recorder Justin Heap, a Republican, does not have access to the Motor Vehicle Division’s records and relies on the secretary’s office to provide address comparison information.

How many people got this notice?

At least 149,776 voters statewide received the letters, according to data gathered by Votebeat and the Arizona Mirror.

Nearly all of those notices were sent to voters by the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. Keane said the letters were mailed to voters in the county between July 31 and Aug. 15.

Mohave, Greenlee, Graham, and Navajo counties said they had also recently mailed similar notices to voters. Graham and Navajo sent 33 and 114 letters, respectively. Mohave and Greenlee did not immediately provide counts.

Some other jurisdictions, including Gila County, said they were actively “processing” the data but had not sent out notices yet.

I got this notice. What should I do?

Keane said the notices generally will not impact a voter’s eligibility or cause their registration to be canceled.

“It simply advises the voter of the information provided to us so they can verify it and update their registration if necessary,” she said.

Voters should check the notice they received. Notices mailed as a result of the state law should be labeled “Confirmation Notice — MVD — In State Mover” in the bottom-right corner. (If you received a different notice, you might have different instructions to follow.)

Then, make sure your address is correct. If it is, no response is required. If not, you should contact your local election officials to update your address in your voter record.

Sometimes, election mail is marked undeliverable by the U.S. Postal Service. Keane said that can lead officials to initiate the lengthy voter removal process. But if that happens to you, local officials will send another notice attempting to confirm your address before taking steps to alter your registration status.

If you’re concerned about your registration status, be sure to double-check it at My.Arizona.Vote by Oct. 5. That’s the state’s voter registration deadline for the general election.

If you have additional questions, reach out to your local election officials. Votebeat and the Arizona Mirror may also be able to help if you run into an issue. Reach us at aztips@votebeat.org and info@azmirror.com.

Were there ways around this problem?

Keane said her office sent the notices in two batches. About 142,000 notices went out between July 31 and Aug. 1, she said. Roughly 7,500 more were mailed on Aug. 14 and 15.

That second batch, she said, was “significantly reduced due to filtering performed by our office for that month.” But it’s unclear whether her office took steps to filter the first batch, too. Keane said in a statement that her office had generally “taken proactive steps to reduce unnecessary notices by removing repeats and false positives where we are able to identify them.” But she did not directly respond to questions about what that filtering process looked like or whether it was applied to the first, larger batch of notices.

The Arizona Mirror and Votebeat also reached out to counties across the state to gather information about how they handled the report from the secretary’s office. Those that responded largely said they had combed through the list to remove false positives or held off on sending notices at all because they lacked the bandwidth and staffing to do so ahead of the November election.

Yavapai County was among those that did not plan to immediately mail letters. Recorder Michelle Burchill, a Republican, said her office needed to manually compare the address discrepancies flagged by state officials before sending out the notices. She added that one of her staffers spent a whole day exclusively going over the 30,000-line spreadsheet from Fontes’ office and “got through about 10% of it.” A preliminary review of the list suggested that about half of the address changes reported to her office were false positives.

“This may end up being a useful endeavor, but initially it is a heavy lift for the counties,” Burchill said.

Keane said counties were “required” to send notices to voters on the list provided by the secretary’s office. But there’s no requirement in state law that the county recorders do anything with the address data. Still, Burchill said officials statewide would likely want to use it to ensure “good list maintenance.” Her office planned to process the report after the election, once it received “a workable list,” she said.

Gila County Recorder Wendy Mannigel-Smith, a Republican, said in an email that her office needed to “physically investigate each voter record.” She said recorders statewide felt they should be able to work with the state to “come up with a more efficient way of handling the data.”

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the secretary’s office, said in a statement that recorders had specifically requested a “straight look” at the address changes, without any additional coding. After counties received their first report from the secretary’s office in May, she said, many began requesting improvements to the address comparison process, including Maricopa County.

Jones said her office had yet to make changes to the state’s voter registration database that could produce a more detailed and accurate report. But she noted that “most” counties were not processing the reports provided by her office before the general election — and, in a phone call, said it was “up to them” and “entirely” their decision whether to do so before improvements could be made.

“This is a new report and another possible source for list maintenance, but it is messy and counties need to work to come to [a] consensus about what they want the report to say and how they want it delivered to them,” she said.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Jerod MacDonald-Evoy is a reporter for the Arizona Mirror based in Phoenix. Contact Jerod at JerodMacEvoy@AzMirror.com.

Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ voter suspense list

2026-08-31T18:37:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Multiple headlines recently have fueled confusion among Texas voters who have been placed on the state’s suspense list.

Voters on the suspense list can still vote. Despite its name, being placed on the suspense list does not mean a voter’s registration was suspended, canceled, or that the voter was removed from the voter roll.

The list is made up of registered voters whose local election officials have reason to believe they may no longer live at the address they used to register to vote. Texas voters move every day, and they often don’t update their address on their voter registration record.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the number of voters on the suspense list now — 1.2 million out of more than 18 million registered voters — is consistent with what the state has seen in previous election cycles.

Voters on the suspense list can confirm their address by contacting their local voter registrar ahead of the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline and filling out a new voter registration form with their updated address. Voters can also update their address at the polls.

Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ suspense list and what to do if you’re on it:

What is the suspense list?

It’s an address verification list. By law, if a county voter registrar “has reason to believe that a voter’s current residence is different from that indicated on the registration records,” the voter registrar “shall deliver to the voter a written confirmation notice requesting confirmation of the voter’s current residence,” according to the secretary of state’s office guidance.

How are voters placed on it?

Every two years, each county voter registrar mails a new voter registration certificate to all active voters, a move required by law to keep the voter roll up to date.

If the U.S. Postal Service returns the certificate as nondeliverable, the voter registrar must then confirm that the voter still lives at that address.

That’s when a voter is added to the suspense list.

A voter registrar mails a notice of address confirmation to voters when:

The voter’s registration certificate has been returned as nondeliverable.
A jury summons or any mailing sent to the voter was returned as nondeliverable.
The voter registrar has received information indicating the voter no longer resides at the address on file. For example, parents can notify their voter registrar if their children have moved, or a voter themselves can call the voter registrar to say they no longer live at that address.

Although some county election officials had trouble mailing voter registration certificates in December due to issues with the state’s voter registration and management system, the certificates were mailed out ahead of the primary election earlier this year.

How can I check my voter registration status?

You can check your voter registration status at VoteTexas.gov. But county voter registration lists are managed by county election officials, who have the most up-to-date information about your voter registration record. When in doubt, contact your county voter registrar directly. You can find a list and contact information by county here.

I’m on the suspense list; can I still vote?

Yes, you can still vote. Just make sure you update your address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline.

How do I update my address on my voter registration record?

Fill out a voter registration application before the Oct. 5 deadline. You can find a form here. Print it, sign it, and mail it to your local voter registrar or turn it in in person.

If you have a state ID or a driver’s license, you can also update your information online here.

If you have questions, contact your local voter registrar — the election official in charge of your county’s voter registration list. You can find a list of voter registrars by county here.

What if I didn’t update my address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline?

That depends on where you’ve moved.

If you moved to a different county, you may be able to vote using a limited ballot — which may include only state and federal races, but no local races — during early voting. A poll worker will instruct you on how to obtain one at the county’s main early voting polling place. On Election Day, however, limited ballots are not available for voters who moved from a different county and did not update their registration on time.

If you moved within the same county, you can vote during early voting and on Election Day by filling out a statement of residence form to update your address. If on Election Day, your county does not use the countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast their ballot at any polling location in the county, you may be asked to go to your assigned precinct to update your address and cast your ballot there.

If you’re running into further voter registration issues, we want to hear from you. Please send us an email at community@votebeat.org.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

A state election law in Minnesota faces a surreal test

2026-08-24T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Can Hamas members from the Gaza Strip walk in and vote in Minnesota elections?

A group of disguised conservative activists armed with hidden cameras set out to test that claim during the state’s recent primary election. The Election Day exploit put a spotlight on Minnesota’s election laws, and has now triggered investigations.

The furor centers on a Minnesota law allowing what is often referred to as “vouching.” It permits a registered voter to clear the way for up to eight other eligible voters to register and cast ballots on Election Day by signing a sworn statement affirming that those people live in their precinct.

The rarely used law has been on the books in Minnesota since 1973. It’s most typically used for residents of nursing homes who have moved out of their longtime houses but haven’t yet changed their addresses.

The activists decided to test the law at Minneapolis polling places during the August 11 primary.

One of the men, Cam Higby, dressed as a conservative Muslim woman with his face hidden by a black veil and said he misrepresented himself as a registered voter to see if he could game the vouching system. Another, James O’Keefe, dressed in traditional Muslim clothing, appeared to impersonate at least two registered voters at different polling places, and said he wanted to vouch for prospective voters. Another activist, Anthony Rubin, walked into a polling place saying he wanted to vouch for several people he claimed were newly arrived Hamas members from the Gaza Strip.

None of the activists said they went so far as to try to cast a ballot in the election. But they did release a series of carefully edited videos suggesting that the Minnesota vouching system is so lax that it makes it possible for virtually anyone to vote in an American election, creating a furor on social media.

What is vouching and how does it work?

So, how does the Minnesota law work, and is it unusual? To use the system, the person doing the vouching has to be either a registered voter in the precinct or an employee of a residential facility — such as a nursing home — vouching for a resident of that facility. That person must sign a sworn statement saying that they know that the people they are vouching for live in the precinct. This can serve as proof of residency for eligible voters looking to register to vote on Election Day, in lieu of documentation such as a state ID or utility bill.

The person being vouched for doesn’t have to show a physical ID to verify their identity, but must still fill out the standard voter registration application, which requires them to affirm that they are a U.S. citizen and eligible to vote in Minnesota. It also asks them to provide a Minnesota driver’s license number, a state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. That information is checked later by elections officials to make sure it’s legit. Lying on a voter registration form is a felony carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines.

In Minnesota’s 2024 general election, about 19,000 voters used the vouching system, about 0.6% of the 3.2 million people who cast ballots that year. Of that 19,000, the vast majority were already registered voters updating existing registrations on Election Day with information such as a new address. Around 5,500 people were voting for the first time.

Minnesota’s vouching law has become a prime target for conservative activists who say the process exposes the vulnerabilities of a system that doesn’t require voters to show an ID. A registered voter can vouch for up to eight people. Someone working in a nursing home can vouch for an unlimited number of residents.

“With tens of thousands of voters registering through vouching across recent cycles, without basic verification safeguards, the vouching policies and practices leave Minnesota’s elections vulnerable and risk Americans’ votes being canceled by fraudulently registered voters,” Will Scolinos, an attorney at conservative nonprofit America First Legal, said in May.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has publicly defended the law. In a letter earlier this year to the U.S. Department of Justice, he pointed out that other states also allow some forms of vouching. For example, Alaska allows state voter identification requirements to be waived if the election official knows the identity of the voter, Iowa allows registered voters to vouch for someone from the same precinct without documentation on Election Day, and Arkansas permits staff members to vouch for residents of long-term or residential care facilities.

Simon denounced the activists’ Election Day operation as “outrageous and totally unacceptable.”

The videotaped incidents were reported by poll workers on Election Day and are under investigation by elections officials and local law enforcement, Simon said.

“The conduct was disturbing,” Simon told Votebeat. Simon said the law has long had bipartisan support in the state as a way to expand voter access, especially for elderly residents.

“This is America,” he added. “Do what you want. If you want to dress up as someone, look no further than Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen. But we have to draw the line.”

Could those people claiming to be newly arrived Hamas members from the Gaza Strip have voted?

To do so, the prospective voucher would have had to break several laws by impersonating a registered voter and signing an affidavit falsely claiming that the other people lived in the precinct. Then the fake Hamas members would have had to break the law by providing false information about their identity and their eligibility to vote in Minnesota.

It is unclear from the videos released by the activists if the poll workers detailed the other steps they would have to go through before they could vote. Anthony Rubin declined to comment or release the raw footage from the incidents. O’Keefe did not respond to a request for comment.

Higby said the group was trying to expose shortfalls in the state election system.

“The goal was never to vote, it was never to touch a ballot, it was never to obtain a ballot,” Higby told Votebeat. “It was simply to test the system and see if poll workers would be prepared to allow me to vote.”

But Simon said in his 11 years as Minnesota’s top elections official, he’d never seen a single case of someone trying to game the vouching system to illegally vote.

“Could someone scam the system?” he asked. “Anything is possible. But you have to look at what is probable.”

Simon said he’d also never before seen a case of someone impersonating a voter.

“There is no end to the creativity of people who are looking to do wrong,” he said. “You have to look at the track record and the incentive structure. There’s a high likelihood that someone is going to get caught.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Nonpartisan groups can resume registering newly naturalized citizens to vote at USCIS sites

2026-08-04T20:28:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rule that had prohibited the League of Women Voters and other groups from registering voters at naturalization ceremonies held at the agency’s offices.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Adam Abelson said the government’s ban was a potential free speech violation under the First Amendment and that it likely had a discriminatory intent that breaches Fifth Amendment protections.

In a statement, League of Women Voters CEO Celina Stewart celebrated the decision and emphasized the organization’s history of supporting new citizens as they prepared to vote.

“Today’s ruling protects that fundamental democratic principle, and we will continue fighting to ensure every eligible voter can participate freely and fully in our democracy,” she said.

What’s the dispute?

USCIS announced in August 2025 that only state and local election officials can register new citizens to vote at ceremonies held at the agency’s facilities. In issuing the ban, the agency cited the “administrative burden” it faced in making sure that nongovernmental organizations providing those services were truly nonpartisan.

The League of Women Voters and several of its local chapters, along with the Greater New Orleans chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, filed a lawsuit in November 2025, alleging that the federal rule violated their constitutional rights and a federal law related to agency rulemaking.

The USCIS rule doesn’t apply to naturalization ceremonies held at federal courthouses, so much of the LWV’s work has continued. But the ban on registering people at USCIS facilities caused the voting rights group to cancel 166 planned events where members and volunteers “planned to register roughly 10,000 new voters,” according to the November complaint.

The LWV said in court filings that it has registered more people at naturalization ceremonies than any other organization.

In the complaint, the LWV points out that many state and local election officials — who would still be allowed to register voters at USCIS facilities under the ban — are elected in partisan races, and that the government hasn’t shown any evidence of the group being partisan.

But the group’s core argument is that the ban violates its First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of assembly in public places. It also claims that the USCIS violated a federal law by creating the rule without an opportunity for public comment, and that the rule itself is “arbitrary and capricious.”

The League “made a very strong showing” that it’ll prevail on the merits of its argument that the ban unconstitutionally restricts its free speech rights, Abelson wrote in the ruling.

Separately, the National Council of Jewish Women argued that the ban was a Fifth Amendment violation because it was put in place with discriminatory intent.

Highlighting federal officials’ recent critical statements about immigration and the USCIS decision to replace the term “naturalization candidate” with “alien” in its materials, Abelson said that a discriminatory intent was likely a motivating factor for the ban.

What happens now?

The court case is likely to continue. The Monday ruling was preliminary, and the federal government could appeal. A USCIS spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more Votebeat coverage about the ban on voter registration at some naturalization ceremonies here:

Some of America’s newest citizens may face an extra barrier to the ballot box Sept. 15, 2025

Clarification, Aug. 5: This article has been updated to specify that USCIS announced its ban on nonprofit groups at naturalization ceremonies held at the agency’s facilities last August.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Texas confirms some flagged as potential noncitizens on voter rolls had provided DPS proof of citizenship

2026-07-30T19:11:21+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday.

Christina Adkins, the state elections director, told county officials the state had reviewed Texas Department of Public Safety records confirming the citizenship of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to an audio recording of her comments obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, as well as election officials who heard them. The voters were flagged after the state checked its voter roll through a federal program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify the citizenship of people registered to vote.

Adkins said the state is still working through the data and that she couldn’t yet say how many of the 2,724 people had provided proof of citizenship to DPS and should thus be reinstated if they were already removed from the voter roll. She characterized SAVE as having “some inaccurate information” but added that “most of the data that we got out of SAVE was consistent with what DPS had.”

According to election officials, the secretary of state’s office said it plans in the coming days to send voter registrars additional information from DPS showing some of the flagged registered voters had in fact provided proof of citizenship to DPS while registering to vote or obtaining a driver’s license or state ID.

There isn’t yet an exact number of how many U.S. citizens’ registrations were actually canceled or how many were canceled in total by counties after being flagged by SAVE, said Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

“Counties are following appropriate list maintenance procedures under Texas law, and will ensure eligible voters whose registrations were cancelled are reinstated, and that only U.S. citizens remain on the voter rolls,” Miles said in an emailed statement.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the audio recording of the meeting with election officials, Adkins told election officials that once they receive the new information and review it, the state believes reinstating voters who had provided proof is “a very important thing to do to make sure that these individuals are not further impacted now that we have more information at our disposal.”

The state used a federal tool to flag potential noncitizens on the voter rolls

Texas officials last fall sent counties information on the 2,724 potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s voter roll of more than 18 million registered voters through SAVE, something the Trump administration has vigorously urged all states to do since it overhauled SAVE shortly after Trump came back into office last January.

Counties mailed notices asking those registrants to provide documented proof of citizenship.

Some voters responded to the letters from voter registrars and confirmed they were U.S. citizens, although a total number of how many is not yet available. The registrations of voters who did not respond to notices within 30 days were canceled. It isn’t clear how many were confirmed to be noncitizens. In some counties, officials said some people on the list had submitted an application to their local county voter registrar that accurately noted they were not U.S. citizens but were nonetheless added to the voter roll in error by county officials, and those have since been removed.

Under state law, if a voter’s registration is canceled for failing to respond to a request for proof of citizenship, their registration can be immediately reinstated by providing proof of U.S. citizenship to an elections office or at a polling location. The new information by DPS would immediately trigger the reinstatement without requiring further action from the voter.

Through their investigations, election officials also found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through DPS. The agency requires proof of citizenship or proof of lawful presence, such as a work visa or green card, to obtain a state driver’s license or state ID, and keeps copies of such documentation on file.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office in December told Votebeat and the Tribune that it did not initially check the registrants flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to investigate. That decision prompted a March lawsuit from voting rights groups and some Texas voters who said the state should have done so. The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

Votebeat reported that the secretary of state’s office later asked DPS to check the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the SAVE program against its records to verify whether any of them had already provided proof of citizenship. Email communications between secretary of state and DPS officials obtained by Votebeat via a public records request show the secretary of state’s office made the request on May 4, with DPS completing its review June 16.

Election officials in multiple states have raised questions about SAVE’s accuracy

Experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE program’s accuracy, and officials in multiple states have said it incorrectly flagged at least some citizens.

In April, former Secretary of State Jane Nelson sent a letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services raising concerns about the accuracy of the SAVE program after county election officials found citizens had been wrongly flagged as noncitizens. Adkins in May also told county officials that her office had found “discrepancies” with the data, though she stressed that it was generally fairly accurate.

States’ use of the revamped SAVE tool is currently in limbo in the wake of multiple court rulings. In June, a federal judge blocked the overhaul of the SAVE program, saying it violated privacy and voting rights. That ruling prompted the Trump administration to pause certain features in the SAVE system to comply. However, last month a different federal judge ordered Homeland Security to restore access to the revamped system for four states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana — due to an earlier settlement agreement.

The rulings also do not prevent Texas or other states that previously used the revamped program from continuing to investigate the status of any potential noncitizens it flagged on the voter roll.

The Trump administration has focused intently on searching for noncitizen voters. The Department of Justice asked all 50 states to turn over their voter rolls, seeking discrepancies and ineligible voters, and sued 30 states that declined to do so. Federal judges have so far ruled against the department in 18 of those cases.

Texas, though, is among the states that voluntarily agreed to share its unredacted list of more than 18 million registered voters, including personal information such as dates of birth, driver license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

In April, at least three Texas counties received subpoenas from DOJ seeking individuals’ voter registration information and voting history.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

The noncitizen voter mystery: New Trump numbers raise more questions than answers

2026-07-27T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The polarizing debate over noncitizen voters escalated last week when New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that an apparent software glitch had led to the unintended registration of 6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024, 400 of whom voted in recent elections.

In a hastily called press conference, Sherrill placed the blame on her predecessor, fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, and said she was taking immediate steps to fix the problems.

Sherrill’s 20-minute briefing raised as many questions as it provided answers. How did a software glitch at the state’s motor vehicles agency lead to adding people who said they weren’t citizens to the state’s voter rolls? Who discovered the problem back in 2024? Why didn’t state officials alert the public when they first learned about the mistake? And what did state officials do about the people who were improperly registered at the time?

Sherrill, who took office in January and said she learned about the problems the week of July 13, said she’s ordered an independent investigation. That’s not good enough for Republicans in Washington and Trenton.

The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding that New Jersey hand over the names of the 6,600 people by Tuesday. New Jersey Republicans question Sherrill’s software glitch explanation and are calling for a legislative investigation.

The New Jersey issue isn’t coming in a vacuum. President Donald Trump has long argued that ineligible noncitizen voters cost him the 2020 election, though no evidence has emerged to support that. His second administration has been focused on rooting out any noncitizen voting, and his top legislative priority is election legislation that he says will block it.

In a televised primetime speech on July 16, Trump said his administration had found 250,000 noncitizen voters on the voter rolls of four states: New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.

Officials in all four states pushed back on Trump’s claims, and said they didn’t understand how the administration arrived at those numbers.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar called the numbers “wildly speculative.” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said that “all evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country.” Even in New Jersey, the 6,600 noncitizen voters discovered by the state did not come close to the 35,152 that the Trump administration claimed to have found in the state. “Do I think that the latest round that he has put out is in some way an attempt to undermine our elections in this country? Yes I do,” Sherrill said at her press conference.

How did the Homeland Security Department come up with the estimates? The Trump administration isn’t saying. But the letters the Department of Homeland Security sent to the four states to notify them of the findings provide some interesting clues.

For instance, the letters qualify the numbers in ways that Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin did not in their public statements.

“We’ve identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states,” Mullin said in a briefing the day after Trump’s speech.

But the letters are more careful in making that claim.

In California, for example, the letter from Mullin said there “may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California.” The letter then went on to say that the government found 81,336 registered voters in California’s public voter registration database with names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers that match those of noncitizens in federal files. That’s less than half the overall estimate; the letter doesn’t explain where the extra 109,496 came from.

In Pennsylvania, Mullin’s letter said the government matched the data of 8,594 registrants to a noncitizen, out of a total of 14,576 potential noncitizens it identified. Nevada’s letter said there were 8,576 matches out of 15,903 potential noncitizens. And according to the Shore News Network, New Jersey’s letter said there were 19,497 matches out of 35,152 potential noncitizens.

Altogether, these numbers in Mullin’s letters say the department has matches for just 118,003 of the 256,463 noncitizens the government is asserting have registered to vote.

The letters specify that Trump officials relied on each state’s public data files. All four of these states are among the 30 that have gone to court to block the federal government from getting access to unredacted versions of their voter rolls, which would include sensitive personal information, such as driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers.

The public versions of the voter rolls only include basic information about individual voters, such as their names and addresses, so it’s unclear how the government could have matched individuals based on social security numbers as it says it did.

It’s likely that even the 118,003 number is too high. States that have audited their own voter rolls for noncitizens or checked them against federal databases by using the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program have found noncitizen totals that are far less concerning.

Upon further investigation, several states have also found that SAVE — which works similarly to the methodology that Mullin apparently used — overestimated the number of noncitizens on their rolls, leading experts and elections officials to warn that the system was unreliable.

Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, called the 250,000 estimate “puzzling and concerning” and said there was no reason to believe the number of noncitizens on the voter rolls is actually that high.

“There are all sorts of reasons why you would get a huge number of false positives,” he said. “There is no reason to trust anything in the order of that 250,000 number. That will absolutely fall apart under any scrutiny.”

Correction, July 31: An earlier version of this story misstated the date of President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election issues. It was on July 16.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania ranks last in new study of 18-year-olds’ voter registration rates

2026-07-20T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Pennsylvania has seen healthy turnout in recent elections, but one important segment of the electorate isn’t participating in such high numbers.

According to a recent study of 30 states, Pennsylvania has the lowest rate of 18-year-olds registering to vote of any of them.

Just 22% of 18-year-olds in the state are registered to vote, according to the study from The Civics Center, a nonprofit organization focused on registering high school students. That’s far below states like Oregon, which leads the pack at 86%, and even neighboring states like New Jersey and West Virginia, at 48% and 55%, respectively.

But it’s not the young people’s fault, said Laura Brill, CEO and Founder of The Civics Center.

“It’s not that young people in Michigan are so much more impassioned and and inherently organized than young people in Pennsylvania,” Brill said. “It’s that they’re involved in different systems and [have] different supports to help them do it.”

The positive news, Brill said, is that the factors that lead to low youth registration are all changeable. She said one of the biggest things states can do is to allow people to preregister to vote — at age 16, or even earlier.

“Half of U.S. teens live in states where they can preregister at age 16, and what we are definitely seeing is that states with preregistration have higher registration rates for 18-year-olds, just because there’s a bigger on-ramp for people to learn about it,” she said.

The top three states in The Civics Center study all allow 16-year-olds to preregister to vote, and Colorado recently reduced that to 15 years old.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, allows people to register only if they will be 18 by the time of the next primary or general election. If they are turning 18 between the primary and general election, they have to wait until after the primary to register. That creates a barrier for on-the-ground organizations trying to register youths, particularly through school-based programs.

Angelique Hinton, executive director of PA Youth Vote, said the tight window after the state’s primary — which takes place in the third week of May — and before students graduate or go on summer break makes it hard to capture those with in-between birthdays.

“It’s very disjointed and it makes it unnecessarily clunky and hard to do,” she said. “We also lose a lot of students that way.”

Brill said automatic voter registration is also a big factor in boosting numbers. But when Pennsylvania residents are first allowed to get their driver’s licenses at 16-and-a-half, they can’t also preregister to vote, like people 18 and older can.

Although Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced bills to allow young people to preregister to vote, none of the legislative efforts have succeeded.

Brill and Hinton also both separately mentioned financial factors. Brill said the data reveals that school districts in areas with higher income tend to have higher youth registration rates, and Hinton said she has noticed a problem with underfunded school civics programs.

“They’re not being taught how government works,” Hinton said. “They’re not provided with the education to really help them understand how to make government work for them, and so they grow up and they don’t participate. And because they don’t participate, then they are never a priority of their elected officials, and there’s a cycle that just perpetuates itself.”

Brill said, however, that another factor can overcome this: teachers. She said she has noticed that when a school district has teachers dedicated to helping students understand the importance of voting and running registration drives, more young people register. She said The Civics Center has done three separate studies showing that when students and educators run registration drives, registration rates increase by 6% — an increase anyone looking to improve voter registration rates would be “over the moon” about.

One school with such a program is Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia, which received the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award earlier this year for its student registration efforts. In 2025, the school registered 86% of eligible students.

Vincent Wisniewski, the school’s chief of staff, oversees its voter registration work and said he was surprised to see Pennsylvania rank so low in The Civics Center’s study.

“Honestly, I was shocked,” he said.

Wisniewski described a strong civic culture in Philadelphia, with organizations such as the Committee of 70, League of Women Voters, and the Office of the City Commissioners eager to help get the word out to young people. Wisniewski said the school takes advantage of every opportunity it can.

He agreed that having a point person to lead these efforts in a school makes a difference, though he noted that that takes resources. He thinks the governor’s award has been a good way to promote registration and that more friendly competition between districts could also help.

Brill said she hopes what people will take away from the study is that states have the power to improve their ranking.

“These are systems that we can change and do better,” she said. “The most actionable pro-democracy, nonpartisan things people can be doing right now [are] to help young people register to vote and guide them through the process.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Texas secretary of state raised concerns about the federal tool used to flag potential noncitizen voters

2026-07-16T20:51:58+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office used a controversial federal data tool to flag more than 2,000 potential noncitizens on the state’s voter roll last year. But in an April letter to federal immigration officials, Secretary of State Jane Nelson raised concerns about its accuracy.

In that letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials, obtained as part of a public records request by Democracy Forward — a nonprofit legal organization advocating for democracy through litigation and public policy — and shared with Votebeat, Nelson said her office wanted “to make sure that you are using the most accurate data,” and asked agency officials to notify her office if they are able to “confirm the citizenship of any individuals previously identified as non-citizens” in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said the agency has not yet received a response from USCIS. Nelson resigned from her role last month. Her last day is July 17, and the governor has not yet appointed a replacement.

The Trump administration overhauled SAVE last year, making it free for states to use and easier to search, and has urged election officials around the country to use it to search for potential noncitizens on their voter rolls. Texas was notably among the first states to start using the program to check voter eligibility.

But experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE program’s accuracy, and officials in multiple states have said it incorrectly flagged at least some citizens.

“Texas’s use of DHS’s illegally-expanded SAVE system has always raised significant risks of voter disenfranchisement, given that system’s known inaccuracies—and these records prove that state election officials are concerned about this as well,” said Dan McGrath, special counsel, oversight at Democracy Forward, in an emailed statement to Votebeat.

States’ use of the revamped SAVE tool is currently in limbo in the wake of multiple court rulings. In June, a federal judge blocked the overhaul of the SAVE program, saying it violated privacy and voting rights. That ruling prompted the Trump administration to pause certain features in the SAVE system to comply. Earlier this month, though, a different federal judge ordered Homeland Security to restore access to the revamped system for four states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana — due to an earlier settlement agreement.

The rulings also do not prevent Texas or other states that previously used the revamped program from continuing to investigate the status of any potential noncitizens it flagged on the voter roll. In Texas, those investigations are still ongoing, but Nelson’s letter pointed to the fact that they have raised questions about SAVE’s accuracy.

“As my staff has informed you, county voter registrars have obtained citizenship documentation from some Texas voters who were identified in the SAVE system as potential Non-citizens,” Nelson’s letter says. “We are aware of instances in which state driver’s license records inaccurately reflect a person’s current citizenship status. In addition, we have learned of individuals who were mistakenly registered to vote—such as due to a clerical error by a voter registrar—even though they acknowledged on a voter registration application that they are not U.S. citizens.”

Nelson added that those examples are why her office urges county election officials to “use all available sources to confirm a person’s citizenship status.”

She praised the Trump administration’s move to make the tool free for states to use and said SAVE has “proven to be a critically important data set,” describing it as one of the many sources her office will use to ensure only qualified voters cast ballots.

Additional records obtained in the records request also show that Nelson’s staff in March met with Homeland Security officials, suggesting the meeting touched on the questions Nelson raised in her letter.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office last fall sent counties the list of potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s voter roll of more than 18 million registered voters against the SAVE program. Soon after the state released the list, counties began to investigate the eligibility of the flagged registrants and mail notices asking them to provide documented proof of citizenship.

County election officials have since confirmed some of the flagged voters were citizens, though it isn’t clear exactly how many. They’ve also found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through the Texas Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office in December told Votebeat and the Texas Tribune that it did not initially check the registrants flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to investigate. That decision prompted a March lawsuit from voting rights groups and some Texas voters who said the state should have done so. The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

In May, Votebeat reported that the secretary of state’s office later asked DPS to check the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the SAVE program against its records to verify whether any of them had already provided proof of citizenship. In a meeting with election officials, Christina Adkins, the agency’s elections division director, said there were “discrepancies” between DPS data and the data provided by the SAVE.

Pierce said DPS has provided the data the agency requested, and that state officials are reviewing it and “will send to counties soon.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Everything to know about voting in Michigan’s primaries

2026-06-25T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Election season is officially kicking off in Michigan.

We’re still months out from the general election, but ballots start going out this week for the August primary election. And the sheer number of critical races means it’s an election you won’t want to miss. Here’s everything you need to know about how to vote.

When is the Michigan primary election?

Primary Election Day in Michigan is Aug. 4. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time.

But you can vote earlier if you choose. Absentee ballots will go out starting June 25 and can be returned any time between then and 8 p.m. on Election Day. Your community is also required to offer early in-person voting — you can check when and where that will be for your city or township at the Michigan Voter Information Center, which is maintained by the state.

Who can vote in the Michigan primary election?

All registered voters can vote in primaries in Michigan. The state doesn’t give voters the option to affiliate with a political party, meaning you will have to choose which partisan section of the ballot to fill out: Democratic or Republican. (Other parties, meaning any that got less than 5% of the statewide vote in the last secretary of state election, instead choose their candidates for all offices at conventions.)

It’s important to vote in only one of those sections. But who you voted for, including the party you selected, remains a secret.

How do I check if I’m registered to vote?

Some communities may send you a notice with your polling place and districts on it, but the fastest and most efficient way is to look yourself up on the Michigan Voter Information Center. There, you can see if you’re registered — and if you’re on the list to automatically receive an absentee ballot by mail.

How do I register to vote in Michigan?

Registering to vote in Michigan is relatively easy and very quick.

If you have a Michigan driver’s license, the fastest way to do it is to register online. You’ll need to affirm you’re a U.S. citizen, a Michigan resident, and at least 18 years old (although those 16 to 17.5 can pre-register to vote). You’ll need to authorize the secretary of state’s office to use your stored signature — usually in the system from when you got your driver’s license — for your registration.

From there, the hardest part is pulling out your wallet to input your driver’s license number. You’ll affirm your information as it appears on your license, input the last four digits of your Social Security number, and then answer a few more questions.

Any eligible voters can also register by mail by printing and mailing in the forms here, which are available in a variety of languages. And finally, you can register in person by bringing a photo ID and proof of where you live to your local clerk’s office. You can look up your local clerk here.

The deadline to register online or by mail and participate in the primary is 15 days before the election — which, for the upcoming primary election, is July 20. But you can still register in person at your clerk’s office after that — as late as Election Day itself.

Where is my polling place?

Your polling place may have moved since you last voted. A number of communities have consolidated their precincts in recent years in response to changes in state law.

You can look up where to go on the Michigan Voter Information Center. It will have the addresses and hours of your polling place, as well as all of your early voting locations and mail ballot drop boxes.

What offices are on my ballot?

This ballot is a long one, so don’t be concerned if it takes you a little while to fill it out. However, remember to vote in only one of the two partisan sections (the Democratic column or the Republican column). If you vote in both, none of your votes in any partisan races will count. (This mistake, known as crossover voting, inadvertently disenfranchises thousands of voters each primary, so make sure you’re paying attention!)

In the primary, voters will decide each party’s nominees for the November election for the following offices:

Governor
U.S. senator
U.S. representative
State senator
State representative
Certain local offices, such as township clerk, roads commissioner, and county executive
Delegate to county convention

Your ballot may have a nonpartisan section as well, if your community has any races like that this year. Mount Pleasant, for example, will vote for a nonpartisan city commissioner, while Clawson voters will weigh in on judges.

Most communities will also have on the ballot proposals, millages, or whatever endeavors local officials are looking to approve. These often come from school districts, but they can also be to support roads, parks, animal shelters, and more.

To check specifically what’s on your ballot, visit the Michigan Voter Information Center, click “What’s on the ballot?” and then put in your jurisdiction. You can also see it on your own voter information page, which you can access by putting in your driver’s license number or other identifying information at this link.

What should I bring to vote?

If you choose to vote in person, the process will go fastest if you bring a photo ID. That can be a driver’s license, a passport, a tribal card with photos, or a student ID — a number of things can work as long as it comes from a government institution and has a photo attached. You can find a list of acceptable IDs here.

But photo ID is not required to vote in Michigan if you don’t have one or don’t bring it with you. State law allows you to instead fill out an affidavit confirming your identity. On that form, you’ll confirm your name and address. Lying on the form is considered perjury, which comes with the potential for fines or jail time.

If you need help voting, you have a right to bring someone along. That person cannot be your employer or someone acting on the behalf of your union, but otherwise they can help you cast your ballot.

Can I vote early in person in Michigan?

Yes! State law requires that any election with federal or statewide races — think U.S. senators or the governor — has at least nine consecutive days of early in-person voting, starting on the second Saturday before the election (which, for this year’s primary, is July 25).

Communities are also allowed to offer additional days of early voting, although not all of them do (early voting requires money and staff resources that are difficult for some smaller communities to wrangle). You can check your community’s specific hours and locations by putting in your information here.

How do I vote by mail in Michigan?

Absentee ballots — which are used to vote by mail — will go out starting June 25. If you are already registered to vote and would like to request one, you can do so online here. Voters with disabilities can request an accessible ballot here.

Michigan voters have the right to be on what is referred to as the permanent absentee list, which means their local clerks will automatically send them a ballot for every election. If you’re on that list, your clerk will mail your ballot on June 25. You can check if you’re on the permanent absentee list by putting your information in here — it will be in a box in the top corner labeled “Absentee Ballot,” and you can check your status by seeing if it says “yes” or “no” under “Permanent Ballot List.” If you’re not already on the list, you can request to be added to it when you request your absentee ballot.

The deadline to request an absentee ballot is 5 p.m. on the Friday before the election, which for this election is July 31. Your clerk’s office will do their best to get it to you by Tuesday, but if it doesn’t arrive in time, you can still show up to your polling place on Election Day, ask them to cancel the absentee ballot, and vote in person.

In order for your absentee ballot to count, it must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day; postmarks don’t count. If you’re returning it by mail, most experts recommend putting it in the mail no later than a week before the election to give it time to make it back to your clerk. If you’re running later than that (or want to ensure it arrives in time), it’s recommended to use a drop box instead. Each community is required to set up drop boxes where voters can return their absentee ballots. You can look up drop box locations in your community by putting your information in here.

It’s worth noting that drop boxes don’t function like mail boxes — you can’t drop your ballot just anywhere and expect it to make it to your clerk. Make sure you return it in a drop box designated for your specific city or township.

Who can I ask if I have more questions on voting in Michigan?

Your first stop is probably your clerk’s office. Your clerk and their staff are extensively trained in election administration, and they can probably answer your questions. You can find your clerk here.

You can also reach out to Votebeat if you see something strange or run into problems. We’d love to hear from you — reach out at mich.tips@votebeat.org.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Texas lawmakers want fixes to statewide voter registration system ahead of midterm election

2026-06-24T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas lawmakers on Tuesday asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for assurances that issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system would be fixed before the November midterm election.

“Those fixes have to be done, because if we go into a November election and we don’t, we can’t claim that we have integrity in the voter roll,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Harris County, during a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing that addressed voter registration and voter list maintenance issues.

Bettencourt said he’s heard complaints about the system, known as TEAM, from election officials in Travis, Austin, and Jackson counties, among others.

Christina Adkins, the elections division director at the secretary of state’s office, said the agency is “dedicating every possible resource that we have within our office to resolving these issues.”

“There is nothing more important in our office than this project,” Adkins said.

TEAM was redesigned and redeveloped by the state and relaunched last summer. Election officials say they have struggled with it since then, and though some functionality issues have been resolved, others continue to come up.

For example, election officials have reported that processes such as voter registration status lookups and precinct assignments frequently don’t work properly. In addition, the system often malfunctions when attempting to produce reports of registered voters and voters who have requested a mail ballot, forcing some election officials to produce their own spreadsheets to keep track.

The problems, election officials say, have added financial and staffing strains on counties already strapped for resources.

The system was developed by Civix, a Louisiana-based vendor. The majority of the state’s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that instead use software from a state-approved private vendor to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and are required to use TEAM to verify a voter’s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.

Groups representing election officials across Texas have asked the agency to halt the TEAM update rollout and address issues that they said “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.” The groups first outlined their complaints in a letter to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson in October, and sent another one in February.

Earlier this month, Nelson announced she’d be stepping down as of July 17. Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to appoint her successor.

Secretary of state, vendor working together on fixes

According to public records, the state’s contract with Civix is for $17 million. The secretary of state’s office told Votebeat last year that the money for it came from a mix of state dollars and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, earmarked for improving election administration.

Bettencourt raised questions about Civix’s work during the hearing. “When I get half a dozen counties with their hair on fire, and some counties are small, and some of them are big, that means that the vendor is behind on actually delivering fixes to the system,” Bettencourt said.

He directly asked Adkins whether Civix was up for the task. “Yes, sir,” she responded, adding her office is working with the vendor on fixes. Civix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Civix, Adkins said, also manages voter registration systems for other states, including Louisiana and Iowa, but Texas is the vendor’s biggest election management and voter registration software customer.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has said it anticipated technical issues with this “once-in-a-decade upgrade,” though it pointed to some unexpected challenges that have exacerbated the issues.

The agency specified that it didn’t anticipate the updated system having to handle significant amounts of data from large counties that abruptly stopped using a vendor that had financial problems. It also noted that redrawn boundaries following last year’s unexpected midcycle redistricting created additional complications that prevented counties from mailing out voter registration certificates on time.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Why the GOP wants closed primaries in Texas, and what that could mean for voters

2026-06-18T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

During the Texas Republican Convention last week, Gov. Greg Abbott publicly backed a push to close primaries and require voters to register with a party.

“We are going to make clear that in the future, only Republicans vote in Republican primaries,” he said Friday, addressing the convention in Houston.

After an unsuccessful legislative push last year to close the primary elections, when voters choose a party’s nominees for the November general elections, state Republicans sued to make it happen. That litigation is still pending in federal court, but Abbott wants state lawmakers to try again. Lawmakers “can and should be more responsive to Republicans than a judge may be,” Abbott told the Texas Scorecard, a conservative news outlet.

During the convention, Abbott noted that closing the primary will require a “thoughtful process” laying out “how we’re going to make sure we get all Republicans registered to vote and identified as Republicans.” Abbott’s comments were received with cheers and applause. The party also made closing the primaries one of its top legislative priorities for next year’s legislative session.

Here’s what you need to know about the GOP’s push to close the primaries:

When did the recent push to close Texas primaries begin?

For years, Republicans in Texas have made closing primaries a top legislative priority, but haven’t gotten anywhere. The push intensified in 2024 when two incumbent state representatives viewed as moderates, former House Speaker Dade Phelan and Gary VanDeaver, held off challengers in their primary races by fewer than 800 votes.

Some Republican leaders claimed Phelan and VanDeaver only won because they’d received votes from Democratic- and independent-leaning voters — which is allowed under the state’s open primary system that doesn’t require party registration and allows any voter to cast a ballot in whichever primary they want.

That same year, more than 70% of voters in the Republican primary supported a nonbinding proposition calling for closed primaries.

How do primaries work in Texas?

Texas’ open primary system has been in use since the early 1990s, when the state moved away from using party conventions to nominate candidates.

Eligible voters in Texas do not have to select a party affiliation when registering to vote, and may choose to vote in any one party’s primary during a given election cycle.

Unlike most other states, where county and state officials are responsible for managing the primary election, Texas gives the political parties a lot of authority. On primary Election Day, the parties have discretion to choose where and how voters cast ballots and how the votes are counted. The state then reimburses them for many expenses and administrative costs.

Why did closing the primaries become such a hot topic?

The issue heated up last fall, when the Texas Republican Party sued Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, a Republican, arguing that the state’s open primary system is a violation of their freedom of association rights under the First Amendment. Then, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sided with the GOP in asking a federal judge to strike down parts of the election code that allow for open primaries. Paxton’s office gave Nelson less than an hour’s notice of his filing.

Nelson, who earlier this month announced she’d be stepping down as secretary of state, opposed Paxton’s motion and argued that it’s up to the state Legislature to make changes to election law. This sparked backlash among some Republicans, and scattered calls on social media for Abbott to fire her.

The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

What would it actually take to close the primaries?

The law would have to change. Republican lawmakers’ proposals to close the primaries haven’t been successful so far, but Abbott’s recently declared support could push the proposal forward during next year’s legislative session.

Alternatively, the federal judge presiding over the GOP’s lawsuit could also at some point rule the current state law unconstitutional, which would also force a change.

What would closing the primaries in Texas mean for voters?

Administratively, changing the state’s current system could be complicated because the state’s more than 18 million registered voters have never had to declare a party affiliation. And the state’s voter registration system is not designed to accommodate that.

In its lawsuit, the GOP suggested that if the judge were to rule in their favor, the party could maintain its own voter registration lists, “develop its own verification procedures,” and work with county election officials to provide them with access to the GOP’s system. Under that model, Democrats would presumably need to take similar action.

But the change could also require administrative action by the state. Election policy experts are wondering whether switching to closed primaries would mean requiring all voters to re-register with a party affiliation. That could be a big lift not just for voters but for the state, which would have to redesign its forms and software to allow for voters to list a party affiliation. It’s not yet clear how long that would take and how much it could cost.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

The state has taken over elections in a Texas county. It’s not the one everyone expected.

2026-06-12T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Three years ago, Texas Republicans approved a state law that was designed to allow unprecedented state oversight of elections in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold that is also the state’s most populous county and includes most of Houston.

State Republican lawmakers said at the time they were responding to problems and irregularities with Harris County’s elections, while some election and policy experts decried the partisan overtones of the new law and said it amounted to an intrusion on local control of elections.

But the law also said the state could take control of elections in smaller counties, if it found problems there when conducting state-required random audits. Now, the state is using the law for the first time — but not to take over in Harris County.

Instead, the state has assumed administrative oversight of voter registration in Val Verde County, which sits along the Rio Grande west of San Antonio and has around 30,000 registered voters. The county voted Republican in the past two presidential elections.

The county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registration officials, who are responsible for voter registration duties, have repeatedly failed to maintain accurate voter registration records despite on-site training and help from officials with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, according to the agency’s preliminary audit of the county, released last year.

“A recurring pattern of problems with election administration and voter registration exists and the problems impede the free exercise of citizens’ voting rights,” the preliminary audit report from the state said.

The findings prompted the state to take control, the first time it has used that provision of the 2023 law. The agency did not answer questions about how long the county will remain under administrative oversight but in an emailed statement, said a full report with details on the parameters of the state’s oversight is expected in July.

The law’s author, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, said the bill’s application beyond Harris aims to address lingering voter registration and election administration issues that some election officials may be failing to resolve.

“This is an example of how we’re just trying to make sure that we’re following the law and it’s not specific to just one county,” Bettencourt said. “We need to make sure that if there are problems, that they’re followed up on, and that they stay fixed.”

A state audit finds problems

In 2022, Harris County, under the leadership of newly appointed election officials, had to extend voting for an hour after various polling places had malfunctioning voting machines, paper ballot shortages, and long waiting periods. Losing Republican candidates filed more than 20 lawsuits against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election. All but one of those lawsuits was dismissed. A judge ordered a new election in one race, though it never happened because the previously elected candidate resigned before it could be held.

During the 2023 legislative session, Bettencourt said the county’s election woes inspired him to craft a bill granting the Texas secretary of state the authority to investigate election “irregularities” after complaints are filed specifically in counties with more than 4 million people, a category that includes only Harris County.

The bill was later amended before passage to also apply to any counties that are selected at random for a state-required biennial audit of elections. In 2024, Val Verde was among the counties selected from a drawing to be audited.

This law gives state officials the ability to follow through and help county officials resolve ongoing problems uncovered by the audits when necessary, Bettencourt said.

The secretary of state’s office, until now, has had less rule-making authority over counties’ election procedures than nearly any other state’s chief election authority. But under this law, secretary of state officials can remove a county election administrator or file a petition to remove an elected county officer overseeing elections — such as a county clerk or a tax assessor-collector overseeing voter registration duties — if “a recurring pattern of problems” isn’t resolved.

That’s what ultimately happened in Val Verde. According to the preliminary audit report, the state found that Val Verde’s tax assessor-collector and voter registration office had no written voter registration policies. It found that staff created new voter registration records instead of updating existing ones, which resulted in duplicates. The staff could not explain how voter registration accuracy was verified, and provisional ballots were not processed promptly.

According to the preliminary audit report, state officials said the voter registrar’s failures led to some voters being assigned to the wrong jurisdiction and receiving the wrong ballot style, as well as voters often having to cast provisional ballots, which are at more risk of not ultimately counting. Due to these consistent issues coming up at polling locations across the county, the county clerk requested additional help from the secretary of state during the audit process.

In 2023 and 2024, the secretary of state sent teams to Val Verde County to provide “in-depth training” on voter registration and redistricting processes. “The state team worked with all offices to ensure that the jurisdictional boundaries were accurately reflected in the statewide system. However, the audit revealed that Val Verde County has not consistently updated this information since the Secretary of State provided assistance last year,” the preliminary audit report says.

The county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, Elodia Garcia, said in an email that her staff has since reviewed its list of registered voters to merge duplicates, though some are still pending, and that they have resolved the issues with jurisdiction boundaries by visiting the addresses of affected voters and double-checking street numbers. She also noted that her office has now implemented a policy manual for voter registration, that voter registration data is entered in a timely manner, and that they now use time stamps to have proof of dates on records.

When Bettencourt’s bill was first proposed, election policy experts raised concerns about how punitive it would be and the unprecedented authority it gave the state over local elections.

But the state’s implementation of the law in Val Verde indicates the state is so far using the law to resolve ongoing issues, not to punish local officials or make sweeping changes to local policies. Daniel Griffith, senior policy director for Secure Democracy Foundation, one of the experts who initially voiced concern, said that he’s interested to see whether the state oversight could lead to improvements in Val Verde and set guardrails for all 254 counties.

“If that is something that is enhanced by this or is a benefit that can be realized, then that’s definitely a good thing, and something that I think most election observers would certainly be in favor of,” Griffith said.

‘We gotta fix it’

Val Varde County Judge Lewis Owens, a Democrat, said the county welcomed the audit and findings from the state.

“You can’t fix what you don’t know is broke. So, with them coming in and giving us the detailed report like they did and pointing out exactly what needs to be fixed, we gotta do it,” Owens said, adding, “We gotta fix it.”

Owens said he expects another report from the state in August detailing the county’s progress. If the issues aren’t fixed by then, he said, the Val Verde County Commissioners Court will decide whether it needs to create a county elections administration position and appoint an official whose sole responsibility will be election administration and voter registration.

“It’s good that they’re holding our feet to the fire. We gotta do a better job,” Owens said. “We can’t afford for a person to go in to go vote, and they’re having to vote provisional because we screwed up.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Arizona promised these voters privacy. It accidentally broke its vow.

2026-06-01T18:46:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Staff at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office accidentally publicly released the home addresses and telephone numbers of hundreds of voters whose information the state had pledged to keep private, an incident that potentially risked exposing them to physical harm and harassment in the months leading up to the 2024 election.

Emails obtained by Votebeat show that the error affected a fraction of voters in the state’s address confidentiality program, which includes victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. It also exposed information about certain voters who were protected via court order, such as judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.

Records show the error went undiscovered and uncorrected for nearly nine months. During that time, the voters’ personal information was released to a number of political and consumer data firms via the office’s routine public records request process.

State law says the secretary of state “shall not disclose any address or telephone number” of voters enrolled in the state’s address confidentiality program unless required by a court order or in response to a request by another state or local government entity.

Weeks before the presidential election, state election officials attempted to claw back the information and notified impacted voters, according to the emails. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, demanded accountability “ASAP” upon hearing of the issue, according to emails sent by Keely Varvel, his chief of staff. The office ultimately fired its director of voter registration, administration, and technology, who it said had caused the error by incorrectly instructing a records analyst on how to pull data from the state’s voter registration system — although records suggest that the director disputed those allegations.

Nonetheless, some voters were left alarmed and confused. Only a handful of the 373 people affected by the error responded to the notice sent out by the secretary’s office, but those who did were concerned about what entities had obtained their addresses and phone numbers.

One voter said they wanted to know “what date this breach happened, and who you released my information to.” Another asked election officials to “elaborate on how the information was released and exactly what steps you have taken to ensure the information will not be released again.” A third, a police officer, said they’d long had their information protected through the court system.

“What does the AZ Secretary of State plan to do about this to protect us,” the voter asked. Records show the secretary’s office responded to concerned voters by releasing documents showing what entities had received their information and those recipients’ responses to the state’s efforts to claw back the information.

Ian Lamoreaux, a forensic psychiatrist who specializes in violence risk assessment, said the situation was “definitely unsettling” for those on the protected list — even though it’s unclear whether any of the voters faced actual harm as a result of the state’s mistake.

“There’s some expectation of privacy,” said Lamoreaux. “There’s an expectation that there’s a system in place that is going to protect you, that’s going to keep you safe from those who are out there wanting to do harm, and then that protective layer is pretty suddenly and kind of strikingly just stripped away.”

State Sen. J.D. Mesnard, who sponsored the legislation that established Arizona’s voter confidentiality program, called the error “a breach of trust.”

“It’s possible that they’ll have covered their tracks sufficiently enough that there won’t be any damage, and no one will ever know the difference,” said Mesnard, a Republican. “But it’s definitely, I’m sure, going to put doubt in people’s minds. The trust factor is broken, and they’re always going to wonder, how protected is it?”

Varvel said in an interview with Votebeat that she regretted the matter. She said the secretary of state’s office had “policies and procedures in place which should have prevented it.”

“Unfortunately, we have members of our staff that fell down on the job and didn’t follow those policies and procedures,” she said. “So, we have done what we can to try to rectify the problem, but we certainly know that’s not making it go away.”

“We certainly apologize for it, and we’re doing all we can to try and make sure [the affected voters are] aware that it happened, be transparent about it, and frankly, hold people accountable,” she added.

How the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office exposed voter information

The error appears to have originated in February 2024, when a records analyst asked Craig Stender, then the director of voter registration, administration, and technology in the secretary of state’s office, for help with pulling voter data to fulfill public records requests, according to emails between senior staffers working to piece together the cause of the issue.

Varvel said in an email to the office’s human resources department that Stender should have instructed the analyst to run an existing, public-facing report in the voter registration database. That report is constructed to remove protected voters from the list that it ultimately produces. The office’s protocol then requires another staff member to double-check the final list to ensure that the query was correctly executed.

Instead, she said he advised the records analyst to pull the information in a way that exposed protected voters’ addresses and telephone numbers and bypassed the second check. The analyst, unaware of the error, eventually sent the records out to requestors.

“If the right process was followed, the redaction would have been made automatically,” Varvel told Votebeat. “That’s how it fell through the cracks — because the right process, which is in place to make sure this is always redacted, was not followed.”

For months, nobody knew that the office was releasing confidential information. Varvel said Stender had worked directly with the office’s public records staff, rather than sending the analyst to one of the people on his team.

Then, the matter came up by chance during a meeting on Oct. 9, 2024. An employee in the room was familiar with the office’s process for pulling voter data and realized the mistake.

Votebeat attempted to reach Stender for comment on this story, but then found an obituary posted by his family. The obituary suggested that he died a few weeks before a reporter reached out to him. The secretary’s office later confirmed he was deceased.

Emails suggest that his version of the story differed from that of senior staff in the secretary’s office. On Oct. 17, 2024, just before he was fired, Stender told the records analyst who had asked him for help that he had never instructed her to use the registration database’s “ballot search” function to incorrectly pull voter information.

“I never did such a thing,” he wrote, adding that the allegation “does not make any sense” because he didn’t know much about the ballot search function. “I was not even aware you were using ballot search until you asked if party could be included. I assumed you meant with one of the canned reports so that is when I went to your desk and asked you to show me how you were generating the data.”

He asked the analyst to “please elaborate on when and where you believe this training happened.”

“This issue is now causing me problems and I do not think it is fair at all that my name is being associated with training you,” he wrote.

In response, the analyst said she recalled Stender showing her the feature “back in February, just before the ballots for the [presidential preference election] were mailed.”

“Looking back, there might have been a miscommunication during our discussions,” she wrote.

Records show protected voters’ data was ultimately delivered to four different out-of-state political data firms and an in-state researcher at the University of Arizona. Three of those firms also openly advertise consumer data offerings on their websites. Combined, at least eight people had access to the voters’ data directly from the secretary of state’s office.

One of those recipients unknowingly passed on the confidential information to another group, a Florida-based polling operation called American Promise. Records show the recipient believed American Promise had deleted the protected voters’ personal information from its database and servers, but it’s unclear whether that organization ever directly confirmed that it did so with the secretary’s office. A person listed in records as a point of contact for the group did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the secretary’s office, said in a statement that staff “went through the proper investigative channels to get the data back from those who originally requested it and are looking into the possible ‘spreading’ following the initial release.” She later said she had “no update” on whether any additional organizations had access to the confidential information.

Arizona’s confidentiality program is supposed to protect vulnerable voters. Is it working?

Former Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican, said he ran across the idea for a state address confidentiality program at a national conference for election officials in 2010.

He pitched the idea to Mesnard, who successfully shepherded the legislation through the Capitol.

“There are bad people in this world, and I’m hoping we can all agree that one function of government — the primary function of government — is protecting people from harm,” Mesnard told lawmakers during a committee hearing at the Arizona Senate on March 23, 2011.

Former Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the program into law on April 19, 2011. It began operating the following year. Bennett said he considered it “an important thing” for domestic violence victims.

“It seemed to be doing what it was intended to do, which was providing these folks protection about their addresses and things getting out to people who meant them harm,” he said. “We tried to solve that problem, and I think we did for quite some time.”

But the recent error at the secretary’s office raises questions about how secure the program actually is — especially because it isn’t the first time that the state accidentally released confidential information about voters it pledged to protect.

In an October 2020 complaint to the State Bar of Arizona, then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, wrote that she had learned of a “functional error” in the state’s voter database that caused it to generate early ballot reports that included 76 protected voters’ confidential information.

“Certain counties provided those reports to the state’s political parties during the election,” she wrote, adding that she “took immediate action to remedy the issue,” including fixing the error in the database and contacting the political parties and affected voters.

Years before that leak, as a state legislator, Hobbs had voted to establish the address confidentiality program. She was a social worker before entering politics and called the legislation “a very important bill” in helping victims of domestic violence “achieve safety once they make the decision to leave their abuser.”

“Many victims of violence don’t feel safe even when they’ve made that break, and this bill will provide them a confidential address,” she said from the floor of the Arizona House on March 7, 2011.

Liliana Soto, a spokesperson for Hobbs, who is now governor, said in a statement that the address confidentiality program is “critical to protecting vulnerable Arizonans.” Soto said Hobbs has “long prioritized voter privacy and safety, including during her time as a legislator and secretary of state,” and that Hobbs acted “immediately” to mitigate risk to protected voters upon learning of the error in 2020.

“The governor believes safeguarding this highly sensitive data must remain an absolute priority,” Soto said, describing any data breach involving the program as “a serious matter.” “She expects state systems to uphold the highest standards of data security.”

Varvel said the previous incident was the impetus behind the office’s existing policies and procedures around how to pull information from the voter registration database in response to public inquiries.

During her interview with Votebeat, she said the office’s rules about handling protected voters’ data hadn’t changed following the most recent error, but that the incident put public records staff on high alert with requests involving any voter information.

However, Jones later said in a statement that the office had also created a new internal list of protected voters and directed public records staffers to compare it against any requests for voter data. She said this “stop list” was implemented “shortly after the incident” in 2024 and is intended to prevent any future accidental leaks of confidential voter information. She added that the office requested funding for its address confidentiality program during state budget negotiations, but was waiting to hear whether it would receive the money.

Votebeat asked Varvel whether she could promise the state’s protected voters that their confidential details wouldn’t be erroneously released again.

“I will say that I always am concerned — like, things are going to happen with data that you’re not anticipating,” she responded. “But, yes, I think that we’re very, very sensitive to this issue.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Police report: Antrim County Clerk’s husband had unsupervised access to office, computer

2026-05-28T19:57:42+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s husband was alone in a secure area of the clerk’s office and using the clerk’s computer, according to a report by the Michigan State Police, which investigated the incident.

According to the police report, a county maintenance worker saw Randy Bishop alone in the clerk’s office on Feb. 19, watching a video stream of a county board of commissioners meeting that Victoria Bishop was attending.

Randy Bishop is a conservative talk radio host who goes by “Trucker Randy” and has claimed to have evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Votebeat obtained the report from a local resident who received it in response to a public records request, and confirmed the report’s authenticity with the state police.

The report itself, which is partially redacted, says the case is currently pending review by the Antrim County prosecutor’s office, though that office said its understanding is that the matter was being referred to the state attorney general, whose office did not respond to a request for comment.

The report doesn’t specify what law may have been violated.

According to the report, Bishop was seen in an area of the office which requires secure badge access, and was using the clerk’s computer to watch a Facebook livestream of the meeting, which was open to the public. The couple told investigators he was watching the meeting in the office because he was expecting a phone call and did not want it to cause a disruption during the meeting, according to the report.

Interviews with the Bishops, as well as emails between Victoria Bishop and County Administrator Jeremy Scott included in the report, focus on whether anyone other than the clerk knows her computer login and password, according to the report.

Victoria Bishop told Scott no one has had access to her computer, and she told the Michigan State Police that her husband did not know her login information. Randy Bishop similarly told investigators that he did not log in to his wife’s computer on his own.

Victoria Bishop did not respond to a request for comment. When reached by phone, Randy Bishop said, “It’s all in the report,” and added he had no additional comment before hanging up.

Victoria Bishop has been under scrutiny recently for what the state alleges are illegal efforts to change or cancel voter registrations in the county.

“You do not have unlimited authority to conduct any action you see fit simply because you were elected to office,” Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Election, said in an April letter that also warned Victoria Bishop she could potentially face criminal charges in connection with that incident. No charges have been filed.

The Michigan State Police report regarding Randy Bishop’s access to the clerk’s office shows the state police were contacted by an official with the Office of Investigative Services Enforcement Division of the secretary of state’s office and asked to pause their interviews due to another ongoing investigation.

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said it could not comment on the investigation into Randy Bishop’s access to the clerk’s office. As for the changes to the voter roll, Benander said the investigation is ongoing and the state has worked with local clerks to restore the registrations of all affected voters.

Victoria Bishop defeated the county’s prior clerk in the 2024 election, saying she would “restore election integrity in Antrim County.” During the campaign, Bishop said she believed “we still have dead people and people who no longer live in Antrim County” on the voter roll, and she promised to work with local clerks to remove such voters.

Hayley Harding contributed reporting.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Texas is cross-referencing its list of potential noncitizen voters with driver’s license records

2026-05-28T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Update, May 29, 2026, 12:50 p.m.: This story has been updated to include a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety received after publication.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office is now checking whether 2,724 registered voters it flagged as potential noncitizens may have already provided proof of citizenship to the Texas Department of Public Safety, elections division director Christina Adkins said during a meeting with county election administrators earlier this month. That check comes after county elections officials found the federal database used to generate the list flagged some voters who had already given citizenship documentation to DPS when they registered to vote.

Texas officials in October sent counties the list of potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s voter roll of more than 18 million registered voters against a federal database used to verify citizenship. Soon after the state released the list, counties began to investigate the flagged registrants and mail notices asking them to provide documented proof of citizenship.

County election officials have since confirmed some of the flagged voters were citizens, though a total number was not immediately available. In addition, they found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through DPS, which requires proof of citizenship, such as a passport, and keeps copies of such documents on file.

In Travis County, for example, voter registrar Celia Israel asked the state to check the registrants flagged as potential noncitizens in the county against DPS records. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office did so, and found that out of the 97 individuals flagged as potential noncitizens in the county, 11 had already provided proof of citizenship.

Adkins during the meeting said that Travis County officials were the only ones who had requested that the state conduct the check of the records through DPS, according to a recording of the Secretary of State Office’s meeting with county election officials obtained by Votebeat. Now, the state is conducting these checks for flagged voters statewide.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office had previously told Votebeat and the Texas Tribune that it did not initially check the registrants flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to investigate.

That decision prompted a March lawsuit from voting rights groups and some Texas voters who said the state should have done so. The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

In the meantime, local election officials in some counties have already removed some flagged voters from the voter rolls after they did not respond to requests to provide proof of citizenship.

It’s not clear why the Texas Secretary of State’s Office is checking the list of potential noncitizens against DPS records now and how county election officials will be directed to respond to the findings. The Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment for this story.

Officials push for additional safeguards to use the SAVE database

The federal database state election officials used to identify potential noncitizens is known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database. The Trump administration overhauled SAVE last year, making it free for states to use and easier to search, and it has urged election officials around the country to use it to search for potential noncitizens on their voter rolls.

Experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE database’s accuracy and reliability, and advocacy groups have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the administration’s changes and how SAVE is being used.

According to the recording, Adkins said the state did not initially check the list of potential noncitizens identified by SAVE against DPS records because that agency already uses the SAVE database.

“Initially, we didn’t think that there would be any kind of substantial difference, but obviously, we have found that there are some discrepancies,” Adkins said in the meeting.

Adkins said the discrepancies affected a “small fraction” of the total list and could be a result of outdated information kept by the SAVE database or by DPS — for example, some of the individuals flagged by the SAVE database may have recently become naturalized citizens — or due to clerical errors.

“No dataset is going to be 100% perfect,” she told county officials. “That’s why we can’t cancel voters outright” without additional investigation.

Adkins said another reason the state didn’t check DPS records before sending the lists to counties in October is because DPS must manually check each record, which takes a long time, and would have left counties with less time to investigate ahead of the March 3 primary election. Federal law restricts election officials’ ability to conduct systematic voter list maintenance within 90 days of a federal election, meaning the window for counties to investigate ahead of the primary ended in early December.

“We wanted to get that data in your hands, where you could at least address some of the kind of low-hanging fruit, is the way I would say it,” Adkins said.

In an emailed statement after this story initially published, DPS officials said the agency is working with the Secretary of State’s Office to “review and provide information from the Driver License System as it relates to registered voters, and requests to verify voter citizenship status are being prioritized.”

During an interim House Elections Committee hearing earlier this month, state lawmakers discussed how the state can ensure that only U.S. citizens are registered to vote. At that hearing, Travis County election officials told lawmakers the state’s move to cross-check the results from the SAVE database with DPS data should be the standard moving forward. Others told lawmakers to consider the amount of time and resources it takes election officials — in counties already strapped for funding — to investigate whether a registrant is a potential noncitizen.

Last year, Texas lawmakers proposed a bill that would require Texans to provide documented proof of citizenship to register to vote, but it failed to pass before the end of the legislative session. The bill was among the most sweeping proof-of-citizenship proposals introduced anywhere in the country, applying not only to new applicants for voter registration but also retroactively to 18.6 million voters already registered in the state.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Exclusive: Justin Heap refers alleged noncitizen voters to AG’s office after strongly worded letters

2026-05-22T21:32:41+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

After weeks of sparring with state prosecutors, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap referred potential noncitizens that he claims to have found on the county’s voter roll to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office on Friday.

His referral comes after the attorney general’s office suggested it could take legal action against Heap unless he handed over information about the voters, according to public records obtained by Votebeat.

Nicholas Klingerman, the chief counsel of the office’s criminal division, wrote in an April 2 letter to Heap that he was violating state law by failing to refer the alleged noncitizen voters for further investigation. On May 20, he sent another letter stressing those concerns and adding that Heap’s “current handling” of the voters’ registration status didn’t comply with state election law.

“At this point, your insistence that you are following the law is wrong at best and purposefully misleading at worst,” Klingerman wrote in his letter, adding that Heap must refer the voters to state prosecutors by the end of the week.

He said the Arizona Attorney General’s Office was prepared to “take all appropriate steps” to ensure that Heap “faithfully executed” state law.

Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, told Votebeat his office received the referral from Heap around 2 p.m. on May 22.

In an April 10 response to Klingerman, Heap defended his delay in referring the voters to state prosecutors and said he was following the law. Judy Keane, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, did not respond to a request for comment.

Heap used SAVE database to identify 207 alleged noncitizen voters

The correspondence came after Heap, a Republican who has expressed skepticism about the integrity of past elections, announced in February that his office had identified 137 potential noncitizens registered to vote while attempting to confirm the citizenship status of 61,681 voters impacted by a longstanding state record-keeping error. Of those 137, the recorder’s office said 60 had previously cast ballots.

But experts have long warned that the database that the office used to identify the voters — called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — is unreliable. Maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, it was revamped and expanded last year to be used as a mass voter verification tool. However, it has falsely flagged citizens as noncitizens in several states, raising questions about whether the number of noncitizens Heap announced could be inflated.

At the time, Heap said he would refer the voters to both Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, for further investigation. In March, he sent information about 207 voters to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office — significantly more than the 137 voters that he had previously said he suspected were noncitizens. His office didn’t respond to questions about where the additional 70 voters came from.

Around the same time, Heap said that he intended to change the registration status of the voters. He wrote in a March 11 letter to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, that he would move the voters to “not eligible status” and then send them notices informing them of the issue.

To regain their eligibility, affected voters would be required to prove their citizenship with a document such as a passport or birth certificate by 7 p.m. on Election Day. If, after the next regular general election, they have still not provided proof of citizenship, their registration may be canceled.

Prosecutor said Heap was using wrong process to handle potential noncitizen voters

In that March letter, Heap appeared to be using a process outlined in the state’s election procedures manual that applies to new registrants suspected of being noncitizens. He also cited that process in his response to Klingerman, saying he was following the law — not violating it.

“The recorder’s office has acted deliberately and in good faith to follow the process established by the legislature and reflected in the EPM,” Heap wrote in his April 10 letter. “That process is designed to protect both election integrity and the due process rights of affected voters. Premature referrals outside of that framework would undermine both.”

But in his letter this week, Klingerman told Heap that his interpretation of state election law was “incorrect” and that he should be following the requirements in a separate state law that lays out how to notify and remove potential noncitizens who are already on the voter rolls. That process requires the county recorder to send suspected noncitizens notices requesting that they prove their citizenship within 35 days.

If they don’t provide the necessary documents, the statute directs the county recorder to then cancel their registration and refer them to county and state prosecutors for further investigation.

“Statute clearly mandates cancellation and criminal referrals after 35 days of discovering a noncitizen is registered to vote,” Klingerman wrote. “You cannot place ‘not eligible’ holds on these registered voters and fail to issue criminal referrals.”

Klingerman’s arguments echoed those of several election experts and lawyers who raised questions about Heap’s planned process back in March. Heap’s office has not responded to repeated inquiries from Votebeat about the alleged noncitizen voters or its plans for them.

Klingerman added that he was especially concerned that Heap was withholding information regarding the 60 potential noncitizens that the recorder’s office claimed had voted in prior elections.

“Our elections are far too important for you to refuse to provide the names of suspected noncitizen voters,” he wrote.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit over Arizona’s voter rolls

2026-04-28T22:29:31+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

A federal judge has dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Arizona over the state’s refusal to turn over an unredacted version of its voter roll, finding that the state isn’t required by federal law to provide it.

U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich’s ruling comes after President Donald Trump’s administration sued Arizona last year, alleging that the state was interfering with the federal government’s ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws. It sought to compel the state to hand over its full, unredacted voter list, which includes sensitive information such as voters’ full birthdates and Social Security numbers.

The DOJ has requested similar data from virtually every state, part of what it says is an effort to make sure states are maintaining their voter rolls and removing ineligible voters in compliance with federal law. At least 12 states have voluntarily shared the data, but most have declined, citing state and federal laws that officials argued precluded doing so.

In response, the Justice Department has so far sued 30 states and the District of Columbia, but its arguments have been repeatedly rejected by federal courts. Five of the lawsuits — not counting the one against Arizona — had previously been dismissed, and the Justice Department has yet to secure a favorable ruling in any of the cases.

Brnovich, like other federal judges in Michigan, Oregon, California, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, said that none of the three laws that federal prosecutors used to justify their request — the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act — required the disclosure of the data.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes, both Democrats, applauded Brnovich’s decision in a statement. They said she “rightfully dismissed” the lawsuit.

The pair previously urged local election officials not to give full voter files to the federal government, writing in a letter to county recorders, who control voter registration data, that disclosure of such materials to the DOJ would “violate both federal and state law” and they must “fulfill [their] oath by declining any such illegal demands.”

“Arizona acted correctly in refusing this request, and today’s ruling vindicates that decision,” their statement on the ruling read. “Our offices will continue to defend the privacy of Arizona voters against federal overreach.”

It’s unknown whether the Justice Department will appeal the decision. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has so far appealed the dismissals in Michigan, Oregon, and California.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the DOJ’s lawsuits and requests seeking state voter rolls:

Voting rights groups sue Trump administration to stop collection of voter data (April 21, 2026)
Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security (April 10, 2026)
In fight with DOJ over voting roll access, Michigan may be poised to go the distance (March 14, 2026)
Top Arizona officials urge counties to withhold voter data as FBI, DHS relitigate state’s elections (March 11, 2026)
Judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit over Michigan’s voter rolls (Feb. 10, 2026)
Texas shares entire voter registration list with the Trump administration (Jan. 9, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues Arizona, Connecticut for access to unredacted state voter rolls (Jan. 6, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues WEC for not providing unredacted voter list (Dec. 18, 2025)
U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls (Sept. 25, 2025)
A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’ (Sept. 4, 2025)

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania has spent $1.4 million updating its voter registration system — but won’t provide progress reports

2026-04-28T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Pennsylvania’s latest effort to upgrade its two-decade-old voter registration system has already cost nearly $1.4 million, according to records obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA. Officials hope the updated system will be ready for the 2027 elections. However, the state isn’t saying much about where the project stands.

That’s a departure for the Pennsylvania Department of State. This is the second time the department has attempted to update the aging Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE system.

During the last project — which was canceled in late 2023 due to what the department said was the inability of the previous contractor to meet timetables and standards — a detailed timeline was available online as part of the public contract. It showed specific dates for each project milestone. The new contract does not contain a similar outline.

This time around, the Department of State has declined to share the project’s specific timeline, monthly progress reports, or reports of any issues that may have arisen so far.

The department said these records reflect internal deliberations of the agency and releasing them could pose a security risk.

Pennsylvania officials announced last March that the Department of State had signed a $10.6 million contract with Louisiana-based technology company Civix to upgrade the SURE system.

SURE is a statewide database that is central to running elections. Counties use it to register voters and maintain their records, print pollbooks, process mail ballot applications, and carry out other administrative functions.

The current system was built in the early 2000s and wasn’t designed to handle the way elections are run now, particularly with mail voting. According to local election officials, it is also sometimes prone to crashes.

The upgrade is intended to address these issues, as well as to integrate the system with other tools such as the state’s lobbying disclosure system and campaign finance database, which have also faced complaints for not being user-friendly.

At a budget hearing in the state House last month, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt received questions from lawmakers about the status of the project, but he didn’t provide much insight into where the project stood.

“We put out a [request for proposals] and less than a year ago signed it with a new vendor, and we’ve been working with that vendor, informed by our county partners, on a replacement system,” Schmidt said in response to one such question.

In response to questions about the project, Amy Gulli, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said so far the department has been “gathering requirements” for the project’s five aspects: voter registration, election administration preparation, election management, election night reporting, and campaign finance and lobbying disclosure. Once that is completed, data from the current system will be converted and brought into the new version.

She added that the department is working closely with counties on the project to ensure that the system functions well for them once it is in full operation.

County election directors who spoke with Votebeat and Spotlight PA didn’t have any more insight on where the project stands.

As for a timeline, Gulli said the department does not want to prioritize meeting a deadline over delivering a high-quality system, but that ideally the system will launch for counties to use in next year’s municipal election.

“As Secretary Schmidt has said before, as a former county election official, he would never launch a new system to be used for the first time in a presidential election,” Gulli said.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Organizer pleads guilty in Pennsylvania voter registration fraud case

2026-04-27T20:32:36+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

A man who was accused of orchestrating a fraudulent voter registration scheme in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 presidential election has pleaded guilty.

In October 2024, district attorneys in multiple counties announced they had received thousands of voter registration applications that did not appear to be legitimate. The announcements made national news, and the incidents were eventually turned over to Attorney General Dave Sunday for prosecution.

Guillermo Sainz, who was in charge of the operation, pleaded guilty Monday to three misdemeanor counts of soliciting voter registrations and will face 30 days in jail, along with a $1,000 fine and 11 months probation.

Sainz was an organizer for the Arizona-based campaign firm Field+Media Corps, which conducted voter registration drives in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 election. According to criminal complaints filed against Sainz and six street canvassers, canvassers were paid based on how many registration forms they submitted. That’s illegal in Pennsylvania.

“The Office of Attorney General determined that the crimes were not motivated by efforts to sway any election or voter rolls for any specific party or candidate,” Sunday’s office said in a statement. “Rather, the charged defendants were motivated to maintain employment and income by reaching quotas.”

According to affidavits in the case, one canvasser who was eventually fired for not meeting her quota told investigators that, on some days, she would “make up names and information to meet the quota, due to fear of losing her job.”

Local election officials in Berks, Lancaster, and York counties started taking note of the defective forms and referring them to law enforcement. According to county officials, none of the suspicious applications ever led to someone getting fraudulently registered. Nevertheless, now-President Donald Trump referenced the scheme during his 2024 campaign, falsely claiming fake ballots had been found in Pennsylvania.

Charges against the six canvassers, some of whom face felony counts of tampering with public records, are still pending.

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for an update on those cases.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court considering challenge to Department of State’s interpretation of voter registration laws

2026-04-23T19:04:54+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Should voter registration applications be rejected if voters’ personal information doesn’t match government databases?

The Pennsylvania Department of State said in 2018 that the answer should be no. But in a case currently pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Potter County Commissioner Robert Rossman is arguing the department is misinterpreting the law.

If Rossman’s challenge is successful, it could result in more voter applications being rejected.

In 2018, the Department of State issued a directive stating that, based on state and federal law, counties can’t reject voter applications solely because the driver’s license number or last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number don’t match state or federal databases, as could happen if the voter makes a mistake when filling out the application.

“Counties must ensure their procedures comply with state and federal law, which means that if there are no independent grounds to reject a voter registration application other than a nonmatch, the application may not be rejected and must be processed like all other applications,” the directive reads. Instead, the state argues the mismatches must be investigated.

At any given time, thousands of applications are in a “pending” status while these investigations occur, according to an affidavit in the case from Deputy Secretary Jonathan Marks. A spokesperson for the department said applicants with mismatched information are not able to vote until the mismatch is reconciled.

But Rossman says the directive is preventing him from keeping his county’s voter roll clean, and he’s asking the court to do away with it.

County commissioners are tasked with overseeing voter registration in their county, and the laws governing those duties say that, if an application isn’t “properly completed,” then it must be rejected. Rossman is arguing that when the applicant’s personal data is mismatched, it means the application wasn’t properly completed — and therefore must be rejected.

Rossman is a Republican with hardline conservative views on election security and other issues. He has said in the past that the 2020 election was a “fraud” and “statistically impossible.”

Rossman first filed his case in the state’s Commonwealth Court shortly after the 2024 election. He is being represented by local attorneys working alongside Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, a right-leaning nonprofit focused on election issues. A three-judge panel dismissed his complaint in December, but Rossman appealed to the state Supreme Court in January.

The Department of State’s directive “impedes his ability to identify duplicate registrations” by cross-checking the ID numbers on new registration applications with those of voters already on the voter roll, Rossman’s attorneys argued in his original court complaint. “The fact that Commissioner Rossman has been precluded, on pain of criminal penalty, from conducting the required examination of voter applications also undermines faith in the integrity of the election process.”

The Department of State, for its part, argues that while federal law requires voter applications to have a space for driver’s licence and Social Security numbers, it doesn’t require applications to be rejected if those numbers don’t match and neither does state law. The state also argues that state law requires mismatches to be investigated, but not outright rejected unless there is another disqualifying factor. If the investigation can’t resolve the mismatch, then the application can be rejected, the state says.

“In short, the fundamental disagreement in this case is not truly about what the law allows or requires, but rather is rooted in Commissioner Rossman’s insistence on ignoring what the Directive and the [Commonwealth Court] opinion actually say,” the state wrote in its brief.

Rossman said in an interview that the department is trying to recast in court what the plain text of the directive says. He agrees an investigation needs to be done to determine if the mismatches are a mistake and that the applications shouldn’t be rejected outright. But, he said, the directive still requires counties to accept the applications even once the investigations are done.

If the state’s argument is that the applications should be rejected if the investigation fails to resolve the mismatch, he argued, then the state should amend its directive.

“This is the pattern with the Department of State — they put out vague directives,” Rossman said. “They just keep making things up as they go along. If that’s what they actually meant to say, it would literally take them 10 minutes” to amend it.

Rossman’s case is not the first to challenge the directive. Conservative activist Heather Honey challenged it in 2023, but the Commonwealth Court rejected that lawsuit last May. Honey is now a deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Rossman’s case raises different legal questions.

Rossman said he had no contact with Honey about her case.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Voting rights groups sue Trump administration to stop collection of voter data

2026-04-21T15:19:26+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

On Tuesday, a coalition of voting rights groups filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice to block the Trump administration from collecting voters’ personal data in order to create what they argue is a national voter list.

What’s the dispute?

Last fall, the DOJ began asking states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant identifying information on every registered voter in each state, including partial Social Security numbers — and other election-related data. The DOJ has said the effort is central to enforcing federal election law requiring states to regularly maintain voter lists by searching for and removing ineligible voters.

At least 12 states, including Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming, have voluntarily complied.

The DOJ has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for refusing to turn over their full voter lists. Federal courts have dismissed those cases in five states, although the administration has been appealing those decisions.

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs argue the DOJ’s efforts are an attempt to take over voter list maintenance from the states, violating privacy laws and risking wrongful voter removals.

“No federal statute authorizes DOJ’s sprawling new voter surveillance, data consolidation, and purging operation. In taking these actions, DOJ is usurping powers that the Constitution and federal statutes vest in the States,” the lawsuit says.

Who are the plaintiffs?

Voters from Texas and Nebraska and voting advocacy organization Common Cause. The plaintiffs are represented by organizations such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the American Civil Liberties Union, Protect Democracy, the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, and the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.

What are the plaintiffs asking for?

The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to halt the DOJ’s efforts to collect the data and to order the data to be deleted. In addition, they want the courts to prevent the DOJ from “disclosing any confidential voter list data internally and to non-DOJ personnel, including to other federal agencies, state agencies, or private contractors,” the lawsuit says.

What happens now?

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At least one other lawsuit filed in federal court is also challenging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE — the database used to check the citizenship of registered voters. The database was revamped by the Trump administration last year to enable states to run their entire voter rolls through it.

Pennsylvania auditor general says Motor Voter system works, but improvements needed

2026-04-20T18:25:53+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Update, April 20, 2:25 p.m.: This story has been updated with more information about the noncitizen’s registration status.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania’s Motor Voter system “works as intended,” but needs some improvements to avoid human error, an audit released Friday by the state’s auditor general found. The Motor Voter system is a program established by federal law that allows potential voters to register when acquiring a driver’s license.

Over nearly two years, the Pennsylvania Auditor General queried more than 200,000 voter applications from PennDOT and flagged 58 as potentially belonging to noncitizens. A closer examination found just one was an actual noncitizen who had been allowed to apply to vote — a result of human error, not the Motor Voter system itself. .

The noncitizen notified PennDOT of the error themself, and it was corrected before they left the PennDOT facility, PennDOT said. The person is not registered to vote.

DeFoor said the issue was a result of “human error” in which a PennDOT employee left blank the field that would have flagged the individual as a noncitizen, allowing them to fill out a voter registration application. DeFoor said after the noncitizen was identified by the audit, PennDOT notified the Department of State about the error.

“Pennsylvanians need to know that the Motor Voter process works, but the internal controls and security protocols around it must improve,” DeFoor said in a statement.

DeFoor recommended changes to strengthen the Motor Voter process, including allowing PennDOT to void applications when errors occur, and recommending that PennDOT follow up with the Pennsylvania Department of State to ensure the one noncitizen was not registered to vote.

A spokesperson for PennDOT said the one noncitizen identified by the audit represented a 0.0% error rate.

“The error was immediately addressed, and the driver record was corrected before the customer even left the center,” Alexis Campbell, press secretary for PennDOT, said. “Ultimately, the audit confirms that PennDOT was and remains in compliance with both state and federal elections regulations.”

Campbell said the individual “is not” registered to vote in Pennsylvania, but referred a question on if they had been at some point to the Department of State. A spokesperson for the department confirmed the individual had been registered, but when PennDOT contacted the department when the discovery was made during the audit, it worked with county officials to ensure they were removed. The department said the noncitizen did not actually vote in any elections.

Another 57 voter registration applications were initially flagged as needing further review of the applicants’ citizenship status, but those were all determined to be from actual citizens and were flagged because of a mistake in the way PennDOT initially searched its records for the audit.

DeFoor stressed that the audit, which he said was requested by state legislators, was not intended to serve as an examination of the state’s voter roll system or a specific search for noncitizen voting. Instead, it served as a limited examination of the mechanics of the Motor Voter system, including how the system ensures noncitizens do not apply to register.

The audit follows concerns expressed by Republicans after Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2023 switched the state’s Motor Voter program from an opt-in model — where prospective voters obtaining a new driver’s license or ID card must affirmatively choose to register to vote — to an opt-out model where voters would automatically fill out an application unless they requested not to.

Those registration applications then go to counties for final approval.

Some Republicans expressed concern at the time that the switch could mistakenly register ineligible voters, since legally present noncitizens are eligible for driver’s licenses in Pennsylvania. They cited a previous issue with the program, revealed in 2017, in which a glitch in the system allowed noncitizens to register.

After the error was revealed, state officials said it was fixed by changing PennDOTs system to allow noncitizens to be specifically flagged by PennDOT staff. Those noncitizens would then be prevented from accessing the voter registration pages within the system.

In September 2024, DeFoor, a Republican, announced he was going to audit the program, a move the conservative Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus applauded and said it had requested. DeFoor’s audit covered a six month period between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2024.

DeFoor was also running for reelection at the time, and PennDOT Secretary Michael Carroll accused DeFoor of “politicizing his office” by “furthering the disproven myth that non-citizens are registering or voting,” but said that PennDOT would comply.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Texas counties receive subpoenas for voters’ records from Department of Homeland Security

2026-04-10T22:14:40+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

At least three Texas counties this week either received or were told they would soon receive administrative subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department is seeking detailed records about some individual voters, including their registration applications and voter history, though counties don’t yet know which ones.

The subpoenas appear to be linked to a series of efforts by the Trump administration to verify the citizenship of registered voters. In December, Texas turned over the state’s voter roll to the Justice Department. The transfer included voters’ identifiable information such as dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and partial social security numbers. It did not include, however, voters’ registration applications or signatures — the state does not have access to that information, which is kept by county voter registrars.

Lubbock County’s elections administrator, Roxzine Stinson, said she met with a Homeland Security representative who informed her she would soon receive a subpoena seeking additional information for at least 10 voters, and potentially up to 30. Stinson said she’ll seek guidance from the county’s legal department on how to respond.

The Homeland Security representative told Stinson “all 254 counties will be contacted,” she said.

Election officials in Brazos County received a subpoena by email this week, Trudy Hancock, the county’s elections administrator, confirmed to Votebeat. Hancock said the subpoena specifically requests voter registration records, including voter registration applications, signatures, and voter history, but doesn’t list the names of individual voters. She said she’s asking for legal advice on how to respond “because the request is open-ended.”

Suzie Harvey, the election administrator in Montgomery County confirmed she has also received a subpoena that was delivered in person, but similarly to Hancock, it isn’t specific about which voters’ records it’s seeking.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the subpoenas Friday. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on whether it has received a subpoena from DHS but Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson, said the office is aware that some counties are receiving them.

The Trump administration has aggressively sought to obtain voter roll data from the states, requesting unredacted versions that include voters’ personally identifying information, such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. So far, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for declining to provide it.

The federal government has also urged states to check their voter rolls against a Homeland Security database, known as SAVE, that it overhauled to more easily check voter rolls for potential noncitizens.

Texas did so and asked counties to investigate 2,724 voters flagged as potential noncitizens. Counties have found at least some of those voters to be citizens, including some who had already provided proof of citizenship to the state. Watchdog groups have criticized the database’s accuracy.

Earlier this month, CNN reported that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had reached an agreement to give DHS the voter roll data obtained from states.

Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University who advised President Joe Biden’s administration on democracy and voting rights, said that if the agency is investigating potential noncitizens who have registered to vote, it makes sense that it might want additional information and records. To obtain that info, though, the subpoenas would need to request information about specific voters.

“You’d want the actual voter registration form, the actual mail ballot envelope if there was one, etc, to see if the individual falsely swore they were a citizen,” Levitt said. He added that open-ended subpoenas such as the ones Hancock and Harvey received seem “very weird.”

In a statement, Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said the organization recognizes the importance of federal oversight “within its proper constitutional bounds,” and is “committed to ensuring that any such requests comply with applicable law and respect the principles of federalism that govern election administration in Texas.”

The organization is recommending that any county election officials receiving a subpoena from the federal government consult with their county attorney or legal representation before taking any action.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

We still have questions about Trump’s new executive order on elections

2026-04-06T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

When reviewing President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting on Tuesday evening, election lawyer Aaron Blacksberg noticed something odd.

The order provides for the creation of not one, not two, but three separate lists:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security must use various federal databases to compile a list of citizens over age 18 residing in each state and send it to the chief election official in that state.
States are invited to send the U.S. Postal Service a list of eligible voters to whom the state intends to provide a mail-in or absentee ballot.
The U.S. Postal Service must provide each state with a list of people “who are enrolled with the USPS” to get their ballots delivered by the Postal Service in that state. The Postal Service would not be allowed to deliver any ballots from people not on this list.

But Blacksberg, the federal policy counsel for the Institute for Responsive Government, noticed that the order doesn’t specifically say what, if anything, these three lists have to do with one another.

“This executive order doesn’t make clear how the administration will even do what they say they’re doing, which is limiting mail-in voting based on who they say are citizens and eligible voters,” Blacksberg said.

Blacksberg’s guess is that the U.S. Postal Service will take List 2 (the list of mail voters provided by the states) and cross-reference it with List 1 (the list of adult citizens, though the order says Homeland Security is providing that to states, not USPS) to generate List 3 (the list of people allowed to vote by mail).

But the order doesn’t actually specify any of that.

Blacksberg noted that the order directs the U.S. Postal Service to propose rules by May 30 governing the process of creating List 3, so we may get more clarity then. But as of right now, the first two lists aren’t explicitly required to be used for anything at all. They just … exist.

Of course, many experts and state officials say the president doesn’t have the authority to mandate the steps outlined in the executive order anyway, and multiple federal lawsuits challenging it have already been filed. But the Case of the Three Lists is only one of several mysteries about how the order would actually work, should courts allow it to go into effect.

The White House also released a fact sheet on Tuesday that aimed to summarize the order and make it easier to understand — but it ended up muddling at least one key provision instead.

As mentioned, the executive order decrees that the Postal Service “shall not transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual” (emphasis ours) who isn’t on List 3. But the fact sheet says, “The Order requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals” on List 3. Those, of course, are different things.

Presumably the language in the executive order, not the fact sheet, is what’s operative. But the error in the fact sheet raises questions about what the White House thinks its own order does.

One thing that’s clearer in the order is how Homeland Security should assemble the list of citizens over 18 residing in each state. It calls for the list to be “derived from Federal citizenship and naturalization records, [Social Security Administration] records, SAVE data, and other relevant Federal databases.” SAVE is a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database the Trump administration overhauled last year and has been urging election officials to use to verify voter citizenship.

But that specificity doesn’t mean the process will be straightforward. “It’s not a feasible thing to do with any accuracy for every citizen in the country over 18,” said John Davisson, deputy director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit that advocates on privacy rights.

He said that while, in theory, multiple federal databases could be combined to verify residency, in practice there is “no reliable way” to integrate systems that weren’t designed to communicate with one another, or for this purpose.

Doing so would almost certainly result in incomplete or inaccurate results, Davisson said. In addition, the order notes the need to comply with all applicable federal laws, including the Privacy Act. That law, Davisson said, places strict limits on the government’s ability to acquire and use personal data, but how those restrictions would apply here is unclear, since the agencies’ plans for compiling the lists will depend on rulemaking that has not yet been developed.

Votebeat this week sent the White House a list of questions about the executive order and how it would work, including to ask how the different lists it calls for would interact with each other and about the differences between the language in the order and the White House fact sheet.

A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, responded with a general statement saying, in part, “Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump.”

But Jackson did not respond to any of our specific questions.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Trump issues second executive order on elections, giving U.S. Postal Service unprecedented control over mail voting

2026-04-01T00:43:36+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued a second executive order on elections, this one giving the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented oversight over who is voting by mail, a move experts and state election officials said will quickly draw legal challenges.

The order, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” says that states can send the U.S. Postal Service a list of voters “to whom the State intends to provide a mail-in or absentee ballot” 60 days before any federal election, and directs the Postal Service to create “unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes” for those voters.

The Postal Service would only be authorized to deliver ballots from people on an approved list, which states would be allowed “to routinely supplement and provide suggested modifications or amendments” to.

Separately, the executive order also directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration and use other federal databases to create a list of all adult citizens residing in each state and send it to the state’s chief election official, though it noted that voters would still be required to register to vote in accordance with state law.

While signing the executive order Tuesday evening, Trump told reporters at the White House that the order was about ensuring voter integrity. “We want to have honest voting in our country, because if you don’t have honest voting, you can’t have, really, a nation.”

Experts say executive order is legally and logistically dubious

Experts said the order will be immediately challenged and that, practically speaking, even if it weren’t, it would be difficult to implement before the November election.

“The president has no power to direct the creation of any of these lists or to restrict the delivery of mail ballots to any given list,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, which represented plaintiffs suing over Trump’s first executive order on elections.

Trump issued that order just over a year ago. Among other things, it attempted to require registering voters to provide documented proof of citizenship and prohibit the counting of mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward. However, federal courts have repeatedly ruled the president lacks the authority to rewrite election law and have so far blocked the order’s major provisions.

Lang said those court rulings “provide a clear roadmap” for challenges to this one.

Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives states and Congress the power to make laws governing elections, not the president. Despite that, the White House has promised for months that a second executive order on elections was forthcoming, sparking widespread speculation about what it would include. The order Trump issued Tuesday was less sweeping than some had expected.

Rick Hasen — a professor of election law at the University of California Los Angeles — said the executive order is “pretty mild, given what could have been, but it’s still unconstitutional and not something that could really be implemented in time.”

Asked whether the U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security could realistically implement the changes in time for the November election, Hasen was blunt: “No way.” He added that if the administration attempted to move forward anyway, “courts would stop it.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service, Jeffery Adams, reached by phone, did not immediately respond to questions about whether the agency would, or could, comply with the executive order. “We’re reviewing the executive order right now,” he said.

Even in the absence of immediate court intervention, Hasen warned the effort “is going to conflict with all kinds of state laws that provide for a late sending of mail-in ballots to newly eligible voters and to voters who simply put in a late request.”

More fundamentally, Hasen emphasized that the proposal misunderstands the constitutional structure of election administration. “The fundamental point is that the Constitution doesn’t give DHS any power over elections,” he said. “The power to run state elections rests with the states. The power to run federal elections rests with the states,” except where Congress chooses to act — and, he noted, “the president is not Congress.”

Small changes, big consequences for ballot design

To facilitate much of the tracking envisioned in Trump’s new order, it mandates that all mail ballots use official election envelopes with Postal Service intelligent mail barcodes, whose design would have to be approved by the Postal Service.

Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at The Election Center, a nonprofit association of election officials, noted the order draws on a ballot-tracking barcode system she helped develop with the Postal Service. She said barcodes and official election mail logos are legitimate best practices — but that the executive order misapplies them without providing funding or a path to implementation.

The system was designed to help the Postal Service identify and prioritize ballots, not to serve as a universal mandate — and many local election offices lack the capacity to implement it, she said.

Patrick also said the proposal conflicts with state laws and voting timelines. “The vast majority of states” allow absentee ballot requests much closer to Election Day, in some cases as late as the “Monday before Tuesday elections,” meaning the changes could disenfranchise voters, including “conceivably tens of thousands” who move shortly before an election.

Patrick said ballot envelope design is “way more complicated than one would ever believe it to be.” Even small changes — like folding ballots for machine processing — can affect how they’re tabulated. She noted that resources to implement barcodes and automation vary widely across jurisdictions, and many states have strict legal requirements limiting changes.

“More than a third of our election offices don’t have a full-time employee. Some of our election offices don’t have a designated computer,” she said. Given those constraints, she believes it will be impossible for many offices to comply.

State election officials express alarm about the order

State election officials agreed that the order would upend the way they do their jobs and, were it to go into effect, would be extremely challenging to implement. Multiple state officials, including those in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Minnesota, Oregon, and Wisconsin, also signaled that they plan to sue.

Wisconsin Elections Commission chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said she was most concerned by the requirement that states provide the Postal Service with a list of mail voters at least 60 days before an election, noting that Wisconsin law allows voters to request mail ballots far closer to Election Day. Jacobs said she was not reassured by the fact that the executive order allows states to suggest additions to the list. “What if the federal government says no? What happens to those voters?”

The executive order also holds that states violating it would forfeit their federal funding. It’s not clear if the order threatens to withhold just federal money designated for elections, or further federal funds beyond that. Jacobs said Wisconsin wasn’t counting on getting additional federal funds for elections but that it would be “rather extreme” for the state to lose additional federal funding.

The executive order also appears to authorize the U.S. attorney general to prosecute election officials who send ballots to ineligible voters, even unknowingly. Jacobs called that measure a “great way to make sure nobody wants to work in elections.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, called the executive order “a disgusting overreach from the federal government.” He said it would upend the state’s voting, which is predominantly conducted by mail, and pledged to fight it in court.

“This move is nothing more than a push to weaponize the sensitive personal information of voters in this country, an effort my office will continue to fight unrelentingly,” he said in a statement.

Arizona’s mailed ballots also already have tracking barcodes on the outer envelope. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said the state’s existing vote-by-mail system has “been used safely and securely for decades” and accused Trump of “trying to control who gets to vote.”

“We will use every legal tool available to defend Arizona’s elections, Arizona’s voters, and Arizona’s constitutional right to run its own elections,” she said.

In Colorado, a state where nearly everyone votes by mail, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said elections officials are “already in conversations with our attorneys general.”

“We look forward to this unconstitutional overreach being stopped by the judiciary,” she said.

Other officials similarly expressed confidence that the order would not stand up in court.

“It’s just an empty threat,” said Scott McDonell, the clerk of Dane County, Wisconsin, adding that his attorneys had told him not to even worry about it.

“The courts will strike it down faster than a cheetah on meth,” he said.

Trump is still pushing other election law changes

Trump has tried passing his election agenda through legislative means, but so far he hasn’t had much success. Two bills that would require documented proof of citizenship to register to vote, the SAVE Act and the SAVE America Act, have passed the House but stalled in the Senate, where the filibuster rule effectively means legislation needs 60 votes to pass. The president has repeatedly called on Republican senators to eliminate the filibuster and pass the legislation, which he has said is his top priority, but they’ve so far been reluctant to do so.

Republicans have had a bit more luck changing election law in GOP-led states, multiple of which have passed proof-of-citizenship requirements and moved mail-ballot receipt deadlines up to Election Day.

But Trump, who has long railed against mail voting, has repeatedly signaled that piecemeal action would not be enough. He has previously posted on social media that he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and said in February that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

The executive order does not address other items from Trump’s elections wish list, but at the signing ceremony, Trump hinted he may not be done trying to change election policies. “We’d like to have voter ID, we’d like to have proof of citizenship,” he said. “That’ll be another subject for another time. We’re working on that.”

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Voting rights groups challenge Texas’ removal of potential noncitizens from the voter roll

2026-03-27T20:49:26+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

What happened?

Voting rights groups are suing the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and some county election officials to prevent the removal of voters from the state’s voter roll based on use of a federal database to verify citizenship. They also claim the state failed to crosscheck its own records for proof of citizenship it already possessed before seeking to remove voters.

What’s the dispute?

Last fall, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced it had used a federal database newly overhauled by the Trump administration — a tool from the Department of Homeland Security previously used for years to verify the immigration status of individuals seeking benefits — to verify the citizenship of more than 18 million Texans on the state’s voter roll. The office said at the time it had identified 2,724 “potential noncitizens,” and had directed counties to investigate.

Votebeat subsequently exclusively reported that some voters included in that figure may have already provided proof of citizenship to the state while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID at the Texas Department of Public Safety. At least one county later confirmed that some of the flagged voters there had done so.

In the lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in Austin Thursday, the plaintiffs said the database, known as SAVE, is unreliable, and that Texas’ use of it to remove people from the rolls, including some who are naturalized U.S. citizens, is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

The plaintiffs said in the filing, which cited reporting by Votebeat and other news outlets, that the Secretary of State’s Office “did not consult Department of Public Safety data—a known source that could confirm citizenship for many registered voters—before placing the burden on the voter to provide documentary proof.”

Who are the plaintiffs?

The nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of multiple voting rights and advocacy organizations, including the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Texas LULAC, LULAC Council 102, and nonpartisan advocacy group Common Cause and its members.

What are the plaintiffs asking for?

The plaintiffs want the court to declare that the state’s removal of voters from the rolls using the SAVE database violates the National Voter Registration Act, and want the court to prohibit the Texas Secretary of State’s Office from sending lists of potential noncitizens to the counties without “further, uniform investigation,” the lawsuit says.

They also asked the court to prohibit the state and county election officials from removing people from the voter roll “solely because they have been flagged as noncitizens by the SAVE system” and to order that anyone who was removed be placed back on the voter roll until “it can be conclusively proved that such voters are not currently U.S. citizens”.

What happens now?

The state and county defendants have yet to file a response to the complaint. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment Friday. At least one other lawsuit filed in federal court challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s use of the SAVE database is also still pending.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the state’s use of the SAVE database:

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Automatic voter registration is getting more Pennsylvanians on the rolls, but they don’t always vote

2026-03-26T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Two and a half years into Pennsylvania’s new program to register more voters, rural counties have seen some of the biggest gains, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis has found.

In September 2023, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that Pennsylvania would join the more than 20 other states that offer automatic voter registration. Under Pennsylvania’s version of AVR, eligible but unregistered voters who get a new driver’s license or ID card at PennDOT facilities are automatically led through the process to join the voter rolls unless they opt out. Previously, these prospective voters had to opt in to register at PennDOT facilities.

State data suggests that the program has achieved its goal of registering more voters, including some who may not have registered otherwise. However, Votebeat and Spotlight PA’s analysis found that these new voters are less likely to actually vote than their counterparts who registered by other means.

Experts who have studied AVR programs say that result is not uncommon.

“It puts people on the voter rolls when they don’t have to put a lot of effort into it, and so they may not even kind of remember that they’ve been registered,” said Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who has analyzed AVR systems in other states.

AVR has registered thousands of voters in rural Pennsylvania

According to data from the Department of State, as of March 24, 353,275 people had registered to vote through the program since its start in September 2023. By comparison, 228,230 people registered to vote at PennDOT facilities during a comparable period of time (September 17, 2019, to March 22, 2022) under the previous opt-in system.

That 353,275 number represents 8.1% of the estimated number of eligible but unregistered voters the state had when the program began. The state’s data also shows that a plurality of those new registrants, roughly 37%, are independent or third-party voters, with the remainder nearly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. But it gives no insight into where these new voters are located in the state or if they are actually voting.

Votebeat and Spotlight PA analyzed the distribution and turnout rates of voters registered though AVR by grouping voters who have registered since September 2023 by county and method of registration.

The analysis showed that while urban counties have gained more total AVR-registered voters, rural counties have seen the biggest gains proportionally. Looking at the number of new voters registered through AVR as a share of the estimated number of eligible but unregistered voters the counties had when the program began, eight of the top 10 counties are rural.

For example, Pike County, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, had 43,257 registered voters as of the third week of September 2023, when AVR made its debut, out of an estimated eligible voting population of 59,690 that year — meaning more than 16,000 county residents were eligible but unregistered. According to state data, more than 4,400 people have registered to vote through AVR in Pike County since then, or 27% of the eligible but unregistered population.

Research on AVR in other states has also shown that the program gives rural areas the biggest boosts. Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies elections, said that’s because rural residents are more likely to need a driver’s license and thus to interact with their state’s department of motor vehicles.

Getting registered does not always translate to voting

But registering to vote and actually going to the polls or requesting a mail ballot are two separate things. Votebeat and Spotlight PA’s analysis shows that those registered through AVR are voting less frequently than their peers who registered through other means.

Turnout for AVR voters across the 2024 general election and 2023 and 2025 municipal elections was 32.6%. By contrast, turnout for those who have registered online since September 2023 was 46.7% in those same elections, and the turnout rate for all new registrants since then was 39.9%. In the 2024 presidential election specifically, AVR voters had a 65.5% turnout rate, compared to 82.8% for voters who registered online and 73.5% for all new registrants combined.

McGhee said some voters who get registered through AVR might otherwise register on their own and be motivated to vote, but many of them likely wouldn’t, especially compared to someone who took the time to go online or in person and fill out a form.

“They’ve taken the initiative,” he said. “They’ve decided, ‘I’d like to be registered to vote, and I want to vote.’”

Stewart noted that, as a battleground state, Pennsylvania already sees robust and highly motivated voter registration campaigns from political parties and candidates, and likely many of those getting registered through AVR are people who have avoided responding to those outreaches.

On the negative side, both McGhee and Stewart raised the prospect that AVR could mistakenly register noncitizens if data isn’t managed properly, since noncitizens can obtain drivers licenses or ID cards in many states, including Pennsylvania.

Such an issue has occurred in Pennsylvania before. In 2017, Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt — who is now the secretary of the commonwealth — discovered that some noncitizens had been mistakenly allowed to register through PennDOT’s previous opt-in system. After the revelation, PennDOT revised its process for voter registration so that if a driver’s file to indicate they were a noncitizen, they would be prevented from ever interacting with the voter registration screens.

Stewart also mentioned the potential administrative burden that could result from having voters on the rolls who rarely or never vote. Administrators may have to spend money sending notices to voters who aren’t actually interested in being voters.

But Thad Hall, the election director in Western Pennsylvania’s Mercer County, said that cost is negligible. He also said he hasn’t heard complaints from any voters asking why they are registered when they don’t remember doing so.

“It doesn’t make my job harder. It doesn’t make my job easier. It’s just another set of forms we’re going through,” he said. “We like people registering and we like people updating their registration, so anything that makes it easier for us to keep our rolls clean and get people on who need to be on and people off who need to be off, great.”

Thomas Wilburn, Senior Data Editor for Chalkbeat, contributed to this report.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Why a recorder’s plan to change 137 voters’ registration status in a key election battleground raises legal questions

2026-03-16T20:33:39+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap said he plans to soon refer suspected noncitizen voters identified via a federal system to law enforcement for prosecution and change their registration status, but election lawyers and experts questioned whether his office is following the correct legal process.

Heap, a Republican, said during a live interview on Friday with KTAR News that he would send the referrals “probably by the beginning of next week.”

He also plans to move the voters to “not eligible” status pending receipt of documents proving their citizenship, per a letter he sent on March 11 to Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat. The document was obtained by Votebeat via a public records request.

His remarks came a month after his office said in a press release that it had identified 137 noncitizens on the county’s voter rolls while attempting to confirm the citizenship status of 61,681 voters impacted by a longstanding state record-keeping error. In that release, his office had said it would refer the voters to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

Heap’s office ran the voters’ information through a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that last year was overhauled by President Donald Trump’s administration, which has encouraged election officials to use it to check voter citizenship.

But experts have raised questions about the accuracy and reliability of the revamped database, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. It has produced false positives in several states, including Texas, raising questions about whether the number of noncitizens Heap announced could be inflated.

In addition, Heap appears to be using a process outlined in the state’s election rulebook that applies to new registrants suspected of being noncitizens, rather than following requirements in a state law that lays out how to notify and remove potential noncitizens who are already on the voter rolls.

Several election experts and lawyers told Votebeat that Heap’s planned process is questionable, and may not meet legal requirements for notifying voters.

“He hasn’t notified them appropriately under the statute,” said Gina Swoboda, a former election official, previous chair of the Arizona GOP, and a current Republican candidate for secretary of state. “He cannot do this.”

Bo Dul, a former state election official and lawyer who previously worked under Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and now specializes in election litigation at the law firm of Coppersmith Brockelman, said it seemed as if Heap was “confusing the procedures” for handling potential noncitizen registrants versus already-registered voters.

Heap’s office has not responded to eight requests for comment from Votebeat since Feb. 13 on its handling of the potential noncitizen voters.

But Heap wrote in his letter to Fontes that his office “remains confident in the procedures we have followed and in the administrative decisions made in this matter.”

“The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office is committed to upholding the highest standards of election administration, ensuring that voter registration records are accurate, and maintaining the integrity and public trust that Arizona voters expect from their election officials,” he wrote.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for Fontes, said Heap’s initial statement “significantly overstated the seriousness of the issue of ineligible voters,” but that state election officials are “absolutely confident that his staff will continue to follow the law when beginning the statutory process of correcting the voter’s record.”

She did not immediately respond to a follow-up request to explain how Heap’s planned process complied with the law.

Heap appears to be using process for new registrants flagged by the SAVE system

In his letter to Fontes, Heap said he has not yet cancelled any of the voter registrations he referenced in his press release, but the flagged voters “will be placed into a ‘not eligible’ status pending resolution of the citizenship documentation requirement.”

He appears to be following a process laid out in the state’s elections procedures manual for handling new applicants for voter registration who are flagged as noncitizens by the SAVE system.

That database was initially designed in the 1980s to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits. In Arizona, election officials have sometimes used it to verify a registrant’s citizenship, but its use was limited because it long required specific identification numbers that local election officials didn’t have for most voters. State law mandates that county recorders “use all available resources to verify the citizenship status” of those registering to vote without providing a passport, birth certificate, or similar document.

The manual instructs recorders on what to do if a voter registration applicant is flagged as a potential noncitizen in SAVE. They are to register the voter with “not eligible” status, and then send a letter to the registrant within 10 business days to inform them of the issue.

To vote, the registrant must provide documentary proof of citizenship by 7 p.m. on Election Day. If, after the next regular general election, the voter has still not provided proof of citizenship, their registration may be canceled.

But last year, the Trump administration revamped the SAVE system to add data on U.S.-born citizens and allow states to upload thousands of names to it at once — as Heap’s office did while trying to confirm the citizenship status of the tens of thousands of Maricopa County voters affected by the state’s error.

Through no fault of their own, those voters had been erroneously marked in the state’s system as having provided documented proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. In reality, it is unclear whether they did so. Maricopa County officials flagged the problem in September 2024, and the state’s top court later ruled that the voters would be allowed to vote a full ballot in the general election. All were longtime residents of the state and many had been registered to vote for years. The largest group of affected voters were Republicans.

Lawyers, experts say recorders must send notice, then cancel registration of suspected noncitizen voters, per state law

Dul, of Coppersmith Brockelman, said Heap is using the wrong process.

“If somebody is already registered, no matter what the reason is to cancel them, to take them off the voter rolls, you have to follow the statutory process for canceling a voter registration,” she said.

The process outlined in state law requires the county recorder to send suspected noncitizens notices requesting documented proof of their citizenship status, and allow them 35 days to respond. If they don’t provide the necessary documents, the statute directs the county recorder to then cancel their registration and refer them to county and state prosecutors for further investigation.

Heap said in his letter to Fontes that the voters whose status he is preparing to change — along with all of the others impacted by the state error — were sent an initial notice requesting proof of citizenship, an apparent reference to mailings by his office last year.

The first version of the notice sent by his office last year was incorrect, setting off widespread confusion, and affected voters were later mailed a second one, with an added explanation in bold at the top explaining that the initial mailing was a mistake.

That second notice advised the voters that they had been impacted by the state error, and requested that they provide documents proving their citizenship. It said voters who did not provide a passport, birth certificate, or similar document would be moved to “federal-only” status, meaning that they would only be eligible to vote in federal contests, such as presidential and congressional races. Under state law, voters must prove their citizenship to vote in local and state elections.

It did not say that voters could see their registration status shift to ‘not eligible,’ nor that their registration could be canceled.

There is no evidence that Heap has yet sent affected voters any additional notices, though his office did not respond to multiple requests for comment seeking to confirm that. Following his office’s Feb. 13 press release, Votebeat requested copies of any notice sent by his office to suspected noncitizen voters. In a response on Feb. 23, records custodians told Votebeat that no such documents existed.

Since then, Votebeat has filed several additional records requests for any notices sent by his office. Heap’s office recently denied those requests, citing an exemption in state records law called “best interest of the state,” which allows officials to withhold public documents in certain circumstances when disclosure could cause irreparable harm to government functions or the public.

Specifically, the office said that disclosing the records could interfere with “ important law enforcement activities” — even though Heap said Friday that his office has yet to refer the voters to law enforcement.

Heap also didn’t reference additional notices in his letter to Fontes. Instead, he said the voters would “receive a formal notice” after they were moved to “not eligible” status.

Swoboda said the letters that Heap’s office sent to voters in June “does not in any way count as a notification.” Dul agreed, saying it was “not a sufficient cancellation notice.”

“‘We have reason to believe that you are, in fact, not a citizen, based on our search of ‘x’ database, and you have ‘x’ amount of days to provide documentary proof of citizenship or you shall be canceled,” Swoboda said. “That’s the notice that he has to send.”

Tom Collins, a former assistant attorney general and executive director of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, which is nonpartisan, said government lawyers regularly argue in court that notices sent by public agencies were sufficient even if they didn’t check all of the boxes that statute requires. Still, he said attorneys should advise government officials to “give the notice the statute called for.”

“My advice, in my position, would be to say, ‘No, we ought to send them the correct notice,” he said.

Swoboda said that Heap has “no business canceling anybody,” reiterating that she did not believe he was following proper procedures.

“They’re going to sue the shit out of him,” she said.

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

In fight with DOJ over voting roll access, Michigan may be poised to go the distance

2026-03-16T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Michigan was one of several states that refused to share its voter rolls with the federal government. Now, it may be the most likely to have to defend that decision in higher courts — potentially even the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Justice Department has several appeals underway involving states that declined to share their voter rolls and initially prevailed in federal courts. Legal experts say the department may be seeking a ruling from the nation’s highest court before the November midterm elections — and Michigan’s case, because it is moving through a faster appellate circuit, could reach it first.

“In Michigan, [the DOJ] filed an appeal within two days of the order appearing on the docket,” compared to much slower responses to other states, said Derek Clinger, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “There’s certainly evidence that they’re pushing the Michigan case the most.”

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals this week partially granted the DOJ’s request for an expedited briefing schedule in the government’s appeal of the Michigan voter roll case. The case won’t move quite as fast as the DOJ requested, but briefs will be due toward the end of the month and in mid-April.

This is just the latest legal battle after the DOJ sued Michigan and a number of other states in September over their refusal to share unredacted versions of their voter rolls. In Michigan, the state shared the information already publicly available but declined to include personal identifying information such as Social Security numbers. In its arguments, Michigan said it would violate several federal and state statutes by turning over the full dataset.

So far, the department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia over their rolls.

A federal judge dismissed the suit against Michigan last month, writing that none of the laws the DOJ cited required the state to disclose the data.

Since then, the Justice Department has appealed similar rulings in Michigan, Oregon and California. Michigan, however, sits in a unique place that may make its case more likely to go the distance. Michigan is in the Sixth Circuit, where appeals tend to move more quickly than the Ninth Circuit, which oversees California and Oregon.

Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan, noted “75% of the judges on the Sixth Circuit were appointed by Republican presidents,” whereas the judges on the Ninth Circuit were mostly appointed by Democrats. That breakdown may suggest that the government is engaged in “forum shopping” — finding a court where the judges are more likely to agree.

“But in my view, it is wrong to assume that the deck is stacked in [the] DOJ’s favor. Just as the district court judge, a Trump appointee, applied the law faithfully to rule against Trump, I expect the same result in the Sixth Circuit,” she wrote in an email to Votebeat.

Clinger agreed that it appears likely that the DOJ is trying to get at least one of the cases to the Supreme Court and that Michigan’s is best positioned to be that case.

The DOJ’s legal strategy also appears to have shifted since the initial cases were filed, he said. Notably, the request for expedited briefing in all three appeals suggests greater urgency, given the government did not request the same timeline at the district court level and hasn’t done so in other pending cases.

The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.

In its request to expedite the Michigan case, the department cited the midterms, arguing that “Michigan voters need to know that its elections are secure and that noncitizens, deceased [individuals] and voters with multiple records are not registered to vote in its elections” before the elections take place. It made nearly identical arguments in California and Oregon.

If that remains the goal, time is of the essence. Even if the DOJ were to win broader access to state voter rolls, there are restrictions that prevent the removal of voters from the rolls ahead of elections. The National Voter Registration Act, for instance, bans states from doing list maintenance within 90 days of an election. This year’s primary is Aug. 4. It also contains specific steps states and counties must undertake to ensure accuracy.

“Even if this case is decided in the summer, there’s still kind of a whole other process in place to remove voters,” Clinger said. “It seems like it’ll be difficult for them to get what they want in time for the midterms.”

If nothing else, Clinger said, the DOJ may be looking for a split among circuit courts, as the Supreme Court is typically more likely to take a case if different jurisdictions issue conflicting rulings.

A spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State directed Votebeat to a joint statement between Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued after the case against the state was first dismissed in district court. Benson has called the Justice Department’s lawsuit, and its initial requests for voter role access, an “overreach.”

Nessel vowed to continue to “protect the personal data of Michiganders.”

“We will not be bullied into violating the privacy rights of residents,” she said.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Trump’s call to heavily restrict mail ballots draws a lukewarm response

2026-03-02T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

When President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass a bill mandating voter ID and proof of citizenship during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, it was one of many moments that prompted Republican lawmakers to stand and applaud.

But when he followed that up with “no more crooked mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel — none,” the applause was less vigorous. Some of those standing and applauding sat down.

Trump’s latest broadside against mail ballots (it’s far from the first one) is interesting given that the SAVE America Act, the bill Trump specifically called on Congress to pass, wouldn’t institute the limits on mail voting that Trump called for. Despite that, Trump has repeatedly suggested that it would.

Polls have found bipartisan support for the bill’s voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements. But it’s clear there’s markedly less support for restricting the use of mail ballots, even from many Republican politicians. “Utah has an exemplary mail-in voting system” that is “administered very well and is vital for our rural communities,” Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican, told the Deseret News this week. A focus group conducted during the speech found that independent voters didn’t like Trump’s call for mail ballot restrictions, either.

The president has a long history of railing against the use of mail ballots (even though he’s voted by mail himself) and suggesting without evidence that Democrats use them to cheat in elections. But if he were to get his way, it would force millions of Americans — Democrats and Republicans alike — to find a new way to vote. In 2024, nearly 47 million Americans cast mail ballots that were ultimately counted, according to data tracked by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And multiple studies have found mail voting doesn’t benefit one party over the other.

Another major GOP elections bill, the Make Elections Great Again Act, does have provisions to limit mail voting — but even it wouldn’t go as far as Trump is proposing. That bill would ban the counting of mail ballots received after Election Day (that’s also at issue in an upcoming Supreme Court case), prohibit states from mailing ballots to voters who hadn’t specifically requested them, and place new limits on who is permitted to return a voter’s ballot on their behalf. The bill has yet to pass either chamber of Congress.

The SAVE America Act, by contrast, has already passed the House. On Tuesday night, Trump increased what has been his steady pressure on the U.S. Senate to act. “Congress should unite and enact this common-sense, country-saving legislation right now, and it should be before anything else happens,” he said.

Nearly all Democrats have opposed the SAVE America Act, arguing the new requirements, especially for proof of citizenship, will disenfranchise voters. Trump, though, without offering evidence, said Democrats oppose the bill because “they want to cheat. They have cheated. And their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat and we’re going to stop it.”

Then, seeming to directly address Senate Majority Leader John Thune, he added, “We have to stop it, John.”

But it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate, and Republicans have just a 53-47 majority in the chamber. Proponents of the SAVE America Act have called on Thune to change the filibuster process for the bill from an on-paper hold to a literal talking filibuster, requiring Democrats to hold the floor and speak continuously in order to block a vote on it. However, that course of action could consume weeks of Senate floor time, and, this week, Thune said that wasn’t happening either.

It isn’t clear what happens next. Many people in Trump’s orbit seem determined to overhaul U.S. elections by whatever means necessary, and the president himself has suggested that if Congress fails to codify the election changes he’s called for, he’ll put them in place through an executive order.

Most legal experts, though, say the president has no legal authority over elections, and federal courts have largely blocked key provisions of his previous executive order on elections, including those to tighten proof-of-citizenship requirements. Trump suggested in a recent social media post that his next legal argument would be “irrefutable,” though he didn’t provide any details. There has, however, been speculation for months that he will in some way invoke emergency powers based on claims of foreign interference in U.S. elections.

Either way, preparations for the 2026 midterm elections are well underway, and primaries begin Tuesday. Voters, it turns out, have been using mail ballots for weeks already.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

What if everyone had to prove their citizenship to register to vote?

2026-02-16T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Presidents’ Day is always the hardest holiday to shop for; it’s hard to know what to get the president in your life. But the U.S. House of Representatives got President Donald Trump exactly what he wanted when it passed the SAVE America Act on Wednesday.

The act, which passed with the support of all 217 House Republicans but only one Democrat, is a centerpiece of Trump’s agenda to exercise more federal oversight over elections and prevent illegal voting, which is already very rare. It’s essentially version 2.0 of the SAVE Act, which passed the House last year.

Like its predecessor, the SAVE America Act would require people who are registering to vote to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship. (Currently, new registrants only have to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens.) This version of the bill also adds a photo ID requirement for voters and requires states to run their voter rolls through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to scan for noncitizens. All provisions of the bill would take effect immediately upon enactment.

But enactment is unlikely. The filibuster rule effectively means that legislation needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, and Republicans hold only a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber. Some Republicans are pushing to turn the filibuster from a procedural formality into a literal requirement that Democrats hold the floor and talk indefinitely in order to block the bill, which could allow the bill to pass with a simple majority if Democrats run out of steam. But that would derail the Senate for weeks, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune isn’t making encouraging noises.

If the bill does somehow become law, though, it would dramatically shake up how the 2026 elections run. Only three states currently require all newly registering voters to prove their citizenship, and 27 states don’t require photo IDs to vote, so the bill would suddenly impose new requirements on millions of Americans.

And there are serious questions about whether it’s even practically possible to implement them all in time for the midterm elections. Election officials are sounding the alarm about how the bill would force them to build out entirely new procedures without the time or money to do so.

The SAVE America Act could stymie potential voters

The proof-of-citizenship requirement in particular would be a hassle for potential voters and election officials alike. According to a 2023 survey conducted by SSRS on behalf of the University of Maryland and three voting-rights groups, 9% of voting-age citizens don’t have easy access to a document that proves their citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate.

Even people with the correct paperwork could be confused or inconvenienced too. Several election officials have compared a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the Transportation Security Administration’s slow rollout of REAL ID requirements. That policy was repeatedly delayed amid confusion over what documents were necessary to get a REAL ID and bottlenecks at driver’s license agencies.

The SAVE America Act would also effectively neuter the option to register to vote by mail or online, since new registrants would have to show up in person with their documentation.

In states that have already tried to implement proof-of-citizenship requirements, many eligible voters ended up getting disenfranchised. After Kansas started requiring proof of citizenship in 2013, 31,089 people were unable to register because they couldn’t prove their citizenship. That amounted to 12% of all the people who tried to register to vote in Kansas during that period. By contrast, the state could identify only 39 confirmed noncitizens who had registered to vote in the previous 14 years.

A court struck down Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship law in 2018.

An election administration ‘nightmare’

“This is bad for voters, but this will be a nightmare for election administrators,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, told Votebeat.

Multiple election officials said that adding document verification to their already very full plates was a logistical burden that they were not prepared to assume. Many felt that it was simply not possible to implement a proof-of-citizenship requirement in time for the midterms, especially since the SAVE America Act does not provide them with additional funding to, for example, hire more staff to review documents.

“We are going to have significant challenges training all of our clerks and registrars to uniformly verify citizenship,” said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat. “We will have to create the training from scratch, and we don’t have the personnel to travel to all 487 municipalities [in Maine] to make sure that they’re doing it right.”

“If Congress wants to do this,” she said, “they should give the states the proper runway of multiple years and millions of dollars of funding per state.”

Justin Riemer, the president of the group Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, which has advocated for proof-of-citizenship requirements, was more optimistic that states were up to the task. “States will undoubtedly have to move very quickly to implement this legislation,” he said, “but there is precedent, as states did [quickly change their voting procedures] during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Riemer pointed out that a plurality of new voters already register through their state department of motor vehicles, whose staffs are already well trained in document verification thanks to the REAL ID requirements.

A proof-of-citizenship requirement would undeniably cost election officials more time and money, though. According to a social media post by Bob Page, the registrar of voters in Orange County, California, the county conducted an analysis last year of what it would have taken to prove the citizenship of the 633,568 people who registered to vote or updated their voter registration in 2024. The study found that, at an average of 10 minutes per applicant whose documentation needed to be verified, the county would have needed to hire 59 additional staffers at a cost of $6 million.

And according to a report from the Campaign Legal Center, proof-of-citizenship laws cost Kansas and Arizona (one of the three states where the requirement is currently in place) millions of dollars — in additional staffing, voter-education efforts, system upgrades, fixing errors, and defending against lawsuits over the requirements.

Ultimately, as long as the filibuster remains in place in the Senate, the SAVE America Act has little chance of becoming law before the midterms.

But that may be the point: The bill wasn’t introduced with the goal of making elections run more smoothly; it was introduced to make the point that elections aren’t as secure as they could be. If, as expected, the bill fails and voters don’t have to prove their citizenship or show photo ID in 2026, it could make it easier for Trump and his allies to claim that the results are tainted by fraud. That could be a different type of nightmare scenario.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Votebeat editor-in-chief Carrie Levine contributed.

Kristi Noem’s hastily-arranged Arizona visit stokes rumors in wake of feds’ unprecedented actions

2026-02-13T22:36:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a hastily-scheduled appearance in Arizona on Friday to push for federal legislation that would institute photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements for voters nationwide.

The announcement that Noem was planning to hold a press conference about “election security” at an undisclosed location in Maricopa County sparked rumors, ultimately baseless, about the purpose of her visit and whether it signaled an election investigation. Her press conference was scheduled to be held just hours before her agency was set to run out of funding and face a partial shutdown.

Ultimately, her focus on the SAVE America Act highlighted the emphasis that President Donald Trump’s administration is placing on the legislation, which just passed the U.S. House of Representatives but faces a difficult path in the U.S. Senate.

Materials initially distributed to journalists announcing the event contained few details — just that Noem would be joined by local leaders to discuss election security.

The announcement came as the Trump administration has been taking increasingly aggressive steps on elections. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently conducted an unprecedented search of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, another critical election battleground. Last week, Trump said Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting.” The Justice Department is also suing Arizona for its unredacted voter rolls, one of 25 such lawsuits that it has filed against states and Washington, D.C..

As word of the event began to spread locally, supervisors in Maricopa County called an emergency, closed-door meeting to receive “legal advice” about their “authority and responsibilities regarding election administration.” Jason Berry, a county spokesperson, declined to confirm whether the sudden session on Thursday afternoon was related to Noem’s planned visit.

Meanwhile, election officials statewide told Votebeat that Noem’s visit caught them by surprise, and that they hadn’t been briefed on it.

Reporters who had RSVPed to attend the event were notified late Thursday that they should report to a DHS office in Phoenix. They would then be taken by shuttle to an undisclosed location with limited cell service and no Internet access, per the message.

That location turned out to be an office building for Homeland Security Investigations in Scottsdale, located about 30 minutes from the meeting point in Phoenix. Journalists were transported in unmarked government SUVs, and upon arrival, waited more than an hour for Noem to take the podium.

When she did, she asserted that it was “a fact” that noncitizens were voting in elections, and added that the SAVE America Act was “absolutely critical to our country’s future.” She was joined at the event by several GOP officials from Arizona, including U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, and others.

Evidence overwhelmingly shows that noncitizen voting is rare. Arizona already requires its voters to show photo identification at the polls and to provide proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate or passport — in order to register to vote in state and local races. Voters can register to cast ballots in federal elections without showing such documents, but must still attest to their citizenship status under penalty of perjury.

Later, Noem blasted Arizona’s election processes and procedures, saying it needs “more improvement” than any other state.

“Your state has been an absolute disaster on elections,” she said. “Your leaders have failed you dramatically, by not having systems that work, by disenfranchising Americans who wanted to vote, that had to stand in lines for hours, because machines failed or software failed.”

Those remarks drew quick condemnation from top state officials. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, accused Noem of “grandstanding” and “spreading misinformation.” Calli Jones, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office, said that Noem had not reached out to Fontes to meet with him about election security during her visit.

“Don’t come into Arizona there from Washington, D.C., and tell us how to run our elections,” Fontes said in a taped statement responding to Noem’s comments. “We’re doing just fine without you, thank you very much.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit over Michigan’s voter rolls

2026-02-10T16:10:19+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

UPDATE March 2, 2026, 4:50 p.m.: The U.S. Department of Justice filed an appeal in this decision on Feb. 27. Opening materials in the case are due to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by March 13.

A federal judge has dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Michigan over the state’s refusal to give the department an unredacted list of registered voters, finding the state isn’t required by federal law to turn it over.

Last year, the Department of Justice requested unredacted voter data from virtually every state as part of President Donald Trump’s quest to root out noncitizen voters, which are extremely rare. The department requested a copy of Michigan’s voter roll in July, along with answers to a series of questions about its voter registration practices.

In September, Michigan provided a redacted version of the voter roll that withheld voters’ personally identifiable information, which the state said was necessary to avoid breaking state and federal law. The Department of Justice then sued Michigan for the complete data later that month.

However, on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Hala Y. Jarbou of the Western District of Michigan, a Trump nominee, dismissed the case. Jarbou wrote in her opinion that none of the three laws that the Department of Justice had used to justify its request — the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act — required the disclosure of the data.

Justice Department officials have argued that obtaining voter rolls is necessary in order for the department to make sure states are complying with federal requirements for how voter rolls should be maintained. Over the past year, the Department of Justice has sued 24 states, plus Washington, D.C., for not sharing their data. Federal judges have also so far dismissed the suits against California and Oregon.

A spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

The Department of Justice also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including a question about whether it would appeal the ruling.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the Justice Department’s lawsuits and requests seeking state voter rolls:

Texas shares entire voter registration list with the Trump administration (Jan. 9, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues Arizona, Connecticut for access to unredacted state voter rolls (Jan. 6, 2026)
U.S. Justice Department sues WEC for not providing unredacted voter list (Dec. 18, 2025)
U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls (Sept. 25, 2025)
A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’ (Sept. 4, 2025)

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Why many Texans are still waiting for their voter registration cards

2026-02-05T19:16:15+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas’ unusual mid-decade redistricting and problems with the state’s new voter registration system have delayed the mailing of voter registration certificates, the documents that give voters information about their polling place and their assigned districts, state and local officials say.

Under state law, the certificates should have been issued by Dec. 6, though there’s no penalty for a late mailing. With early voting for the March 3 primaries set to begin Feb. 17, the delay has confused some voters who were expecting to have received the certificates by now, and multiple election officials said they have been fielding calls and questions about the missing certificates for weeks.

The certificates are small postcards that counties send to registered voters every two years, listing the voter’s local voting precinct, their congressional, state Senate and House districts, county precincts, and city and school districts.

Voters don’t need the cards to vote, but election officials say the cards can serve as an additional form of ID and help voters identify their new congressional or legislative district if it has changed. They also help election officials conduct voter list maintenance: When a card is returned as undeliverable, it signals that the voter may have moved.

Redistricting puts added strain on TEAM

Most of the state’s 254 counties rely on the Secretary of State’s free election and voter registration management system, called TEAM, to produce the certificates. Local election officials have for months complained that they are struggling with the system, which was overhauled in July, and several election officials said that is contributing to the delay.

State election officials said they also didn’t anticipate the system needing to handle the unexpected mid-cycle redistricting lawmakers undertook last year, and the redrawn boundaries are creating additional complications. Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the state is still working with “several counties” to upload redistricting data, including Harris and Tarrant counties, which could not begin the process until they completed special runoff elections Jan. 31.

The system has lagged in producing reports containing large amounts of data and images that county officials need to print the certificates. Those reports are reviewed by both state and local election administrators to ensure voters’ information, including street addresses, cities, precincts, and districts, is accurate.

“This involves a massive upload of data to our system and then a careful review of voter data and validations at the county level to ensure accurate voter lists,” Pierce said. She did not respond to specific questions about election officials’ comments about TEAM.

Counties that use an outside vendor instead of TEAM to manage their voter rolls, including Collin County in North Texas and Nueces County in South Texas, mailed out the certificates to voters in late January.

Time is short for updating voter rolls

In Brazos County, which uses TEAM, election administrator Trudy Hancock counts on having time to update her voter lists after the initial mailing of voter registration cards. She typically gets more than 10,000 of them returned to her office as undeliverable. Brazos is home to College Station and Texas A&M University, and voters there are constantly moving either within the county or elsewhere.

The returned cards help election officials identify voters who may have moved and can be placed on the suspense list. Those voters have a chance to update their registration at the polls before they can vote.

But as of Wednesday, Hancock hadn’t been able to mail the certificates to her voters yet. She doubts she’ll have time to process returned certificates in time to flag voters before the March 3 primaries.

“Even if voter certificates went out this week, we’re not going to get that done in time to update the pollbooks,” Hancock said.

Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator, also has not yet been able to mail out certificates to voters and said she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to. Kaufman has more than 117,000 registered voters.

“For us, especially in a growing county with a smaller staff, we’re having to adjust when a system should be functional and meeting our needs,” Smith said. “So we’re just trying to work through those growing pains until there’s a better way.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Republicans introduce sweeping election legislation, but it’s unlikely to become law

2026-01-30T18:19:01+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Congressional Republicans on Thursday redoubled their efforts to regulate elections nationwide, introducing two new bills that draw heavily from President Donald Trump’s agenda.

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, the chair of the House Administration Committee, unveiled the Make Elections Great Again Act, a bill that would overhaul several aspects of how elections are run, from limiting the use of mail voting to setting a national photo ID requirement for voting.

Later in the day, Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Chip Roy introduced the SAVE America Act, which combines a photo ID requirement for voters with the SAVE Act, a bill passed by the House last year to require Americans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote.

Both the MEGA Act and SAVE America Act face long odds of becoming law anytime soon. Although the measures could pass the Republican-controlled House, they would almost certainly fail in the Senate, where the filibuster effectively means that legislation needs 60 votes to pass. (Republicans control the Senate only 53-47.) Given that both bills go farther than the SAVE Act, which has languished in the upper chamber for almost a year, there’s little reason to expect they would have any more luck in the Senate.

Trump and his allies have for years been intent on changing the way U.S. elections are run, building on their false assertions of widespread fraud. In recent days, billionaire Elon Musk has used his social-media site X to pressure senators to pass the SAVE Act, which may explain the timing of the two new bills.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, his administration has also attempted to exercise extraordinary power over election administration, suing 24 states and Washington, D.C., for not sharing comprehensive data on their registered voters and issuing a sweeping executive order on elections last year. The bills also come the same week that the FBI seized ballots from the 2020 election from an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, in search of evidence of malfeasance.

So far, however, key provisions of Trump’s executive order have been struck down in court, and in recent months, he’s repeatedly called on Congress to pass legislation enacting his election-related priorities. The two proposals contain several policies from Trump’s 2025 executive order.

In November, the White House press secretary said the White House was working on a second executive order on elections, but one has yet to materialize.

What the Republican election bills would do

Should they ever pass, the SAVE America Act and especially the MEGA Act would represent the most transformative federal law aimed at reshaping national election administration in decades.

Both bills would:

Require Americans to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship (such as a passport) when registering to vote. Currently, new registrants must attest that they are a U.S. citizen, but most people aren’t required to provide documentation to prove it. According to Ballotpedia, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wyoming are the only states that currently require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Require voters to provide photo ID. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 23 states ask voters to provide photo IDs; in 13 states, non-photo IDs are acceptable, while 14 states plus Washington, D.C., don’t ask voters for ID. Notably, the ID requirement would apply not only to in-person voters, but also to mail voters, who would have to provide photocopies of their IDs (although the MEGA Act allows voters to provide unique identifying numbers, such as the last four digits of their Social Security number, instead). Currently, only Arkansas and North Carolina require mail voters to enclose copies of their IDs.
Require states to regularly check their voter rolls for noncitizens. For example, the MEGA Act would require states to compare their voter lists against the Department of Homeland Security’s citizenship database, known as SAVE, on at least a monthly basis. The Trump administration upgraded SAVE last year to make it easier to use for large-scale searches, and the department said in November that 26 states are now using it for voter verification.

The MEGA Act also includes a host of other provisions, such as:

Banning universal vote-by-mail. In other words, the eight states (plus Washington, D.C.) that automatically mail ballots to every voter would no longer be allowed to do so.
Prohibiting states from accepting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. Currently, 14 states and Washington, D.C., do this, as long as the ballots are postmarked on time. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of this practice later this year.
Barring anyone except the voter, an immediate family member, or caregiver from possessing the voter’s ballot. Each state has different rules about who (if anyone) can return a mail voter’s ballot for them, but several have laws broad enough that allow third parties, such as campaign operatives, to do so — a practice Republicans have described as “ballot harvesting.”
Requiring states to provide hand-marked paper ballots. According to Verified Voting, nearly 70% of registered voters already live in a jurisdiction that uses hand-marked paper ballots. Most of the remaining jurisdictions use ballot-marking devices, which would be still legal under the bill, but they would need to provide voters with the option to hand-mark their ballots as well.
Outlawing ranked-choice voting. This would affect only a few jurisdictions. Alaska, Maine, and Washington, D.C., are the only places that use ranked-choice voting in federal elections in the regular course of business. However, Georgia also uses it for military and overseas voters, and Hawaii uses it for special elections.

The provisions in both bills would only apply to federal elections, forcing states to choose between changing their state election laws to match and administering federal and state elections differently. Either way, the bill would likely create more work for election officials. Given how many states would have to change their voting procedures, the enactment of either of these bills would send officials scrambling to adapt to unfamiliar requirements.

And if officials fail to live up to the law, they could be held liable in new ways. The MEGA Act explicitly allows the attorney general, and even private citizens, to file civil lawsuits against election officials for noncompliance.

Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat, said that this type of broad mandate from the federal government “not only potentially disenfranchises voters, but it also ignores how under-resourced elections and secretaries of state are in general.”

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Correction, Feb. 6, 2026, 10:09 a.m.: This story has been corrected to reflect that Washington, D.C., will use ranked-choice voting starting in 2026 and that Georgia and Hawaii also use ranked-choice voting in some circumstances. It has also been corrected to reflect that the Department of Justice has sued 24 states and Washington, D.C., for not handing over their voter rolls, not 23 states.

Postal Service changes mean Texas voters shouldn’t wait to mail voter registrations and ballots

2026-01-21T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texans seeking to register to vote or cast a ballot by mail may not want to wait until the last minute, thanks to new guidance from the U.S. Postal Service.

The USPS last month advised that it may not postmark a piece of mail on the same day that it takes possession of it. Postmarks are applied once mail reaches a processing facility, it said, which may not be the same day it’s dropped in a mailbox, for example.

The new policy means that even if a voter drops their mail ballot in a box by Election Day, it could be rejected if it’s not postmarked on that day. A voter registration application also could miss being postmarked by the Feb. 2 deadline.

That means it’s important to mail voter registration applications and mail ballots early, or bring election mail to a post office and request a manual postmark.

In Texas, there’s no way to register to vote online. The state requires voters to submit a voter registration application to county voter registrars in person or by mail. Mailed applications must be postmarked by Feb. 2 in order for a voter to be eligible to cast a ballot in next month’s primary election.

Mail ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by 5 p.m. on the following day in order to be counted.

Here’s what you need to know about the deadlines and procedures for registering and voting by mail:

When is the Texas voter registration deadline for the primary?

In order for a voter to be eligible to vote in the March 3 primary election, their voter registration application must be submitted to the county voter registrar or postmarked by Feb. 2.

Voters can register to vote at any time prior to the deadline. You can print out this form, sign it, and submit it.

What is the Texas mail-in ballot application deadline?

If you qualify to vote by mail, you must first fill out and submit a mail ballot application. For the coming March primary, all mail ballot applications must be received by the end of business on Feb. 20. That time of day varies by county.

What’s the deadline to mail in my ballot?

Election officials can tally mail-in ballots that are postmarked before 7 p.m. on March 3, which is Election Day, and received by 5 p.m. on March 4.

Can I drop it off in person instead?

Yes, but only on Election Day, when voters are permitted to drop off their mail ballot in person at the elections office. Voters are allowed to deliver only their own ballot, and must bring a photo ID. Mail-in ballots cannot be dropped off in person during the two weeks of early voting or any other time prior to Election Day.

What if I live abroad or I am a member of the military overseas?

The deadline to receive ballots from overseas voters is Monday, March 9. The carrier envelope must have a postmark showing it was in the mail by 7 p.m. on March 3 (Election Day).

For military voters who mailed ballots domestically or from overseas and who submitted a Federal Post Card Application, the deadline is also March 9. The carrier envelope does not need to have any postmark.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Texas shares entire voter registration list with the Trump administration

2026-01-09T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas officials have turned over the state’s voter roll to the U.S. Justice Department, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, complying with the Trump administration’s demands for access to data on millions of voters across the country.

The Justice Department last fall began asking all 50 states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant identifying information on every registered voter in each state — and other election-related data. The Justice Department has said the effort is central to its mission of enforcing election law requiring states to regularly maintain voter lists by searching for and removing ineligible voters.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune that the state had sent its voter roll, which includes information on the approximately 18.4 million voters registered in Texas, to the Justice Department on Dec. 23.

The state included identifiable information about voters, including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, Pierce said.

Experts and state officials around the country have raised concerns over the legality of the Justice Department’s effort to obtain states’ voter rolls and whether it could compromise voter privacy protections. The Justice Department has said it is entitled to the data under federal law, and withholding it interferes with its ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws.

The department has now sued 23 states and Washington, D.C., for declining to voluntarily turn over their voter rolls. Those states, which include some led by officials of both political parties, have generally argued that states are responsible for voter registration and are barred by state and federal law from sharing certain private information about voters. In an interview with “The Charlie Kirk Show” last month, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said 13 states, including Texas, had voluntarily agreed to turn over their voter rolls.

In a letter to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, dated Friday and obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, the Democratic National Committee said the move to hand over the voter roll could violate federal election law.

DNC Chair Ken Martin said the turnover of such data is tantamount to a “big government power grab” and would invite privacy violations and could result in eligible voters being kicked off the rolls. The DNC, he said in a statement, “won’t stand idly by as the Trump DOJ tries to get access to Texas voters’ sensitive information.”

In its letter, Daniel Freeman, the DNC’s litigation director, requested records related to the Justice Department’s request, and warned the party could take further action.

Some election officials and voting rights watchdog groups have raised concerns about what the Justice Department intends to do with the information provided by the states, with some suggesting it may be used to create a national database of voters.

Votebeat and The Texas Tribune have asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for a signed copy of the agreement between the state and the Justice Department, known as a memorandum of understanding, governing how the sharing of the voter data would work and steps the state has agreed to take in response to any questions about voter eligibility raised by the Justice Department. The state has not yet released it.

In a proposed memorandum of understanding sent to Wisconsin officials last month and publicly released by state officials, the Justice Department said that upon receiving the state’s voter data, it would check the state’s voter roll for “list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, anomalies or concerns.” The department would then notify the state and give it 45 days to correct any problems. The state would then agree to resubmit the voter roll to the department. Wisconsin declined the agreement, and the Justice Department has since sued the state.

In his letter to Nelson, Freeman identified two potential legal violations associated with some of those clauses, though acknowledged he didn’t yet know whether Texas had signed such an agreement and asked for records.

Freeman wrote that the 45-day removal period as laid out in the public versions of the memorandum would run afoul of a provision in the National Voter Registration Act that lays out specific conditions, such as having missed two elections after receiving a notice from the state, for states to remove registered voters from the rolls.

Freeman also wrote that federal law also bars states from doing systemic voter removals from the rolls within 90 days of a primary or general election. Because Texas has an upcoming March 3 primary, May 26 runoff and Nov. 3 general election, the state cannot conduct such list maintenance until after the runoff, Freeman wrote. The 90-day moratorium would then kick in again on Aug. 6, ahead of the November election.

Texas agreed to the memorandum of understanding and released the data, but told the department that it did so with the understanding it wouldn’t “limit or affect the duties, responsibilities, and rights” of the state under either the NVRA or other federal laws, according to two letters the Texas Secretary of State’s Office sent the Justice Department in December and released to Votebeat and The Texas Tribune.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

U.S. Justice Department sues Arizona, Connecticut for access to unredacted state voter rolls

2026-01-06T23:38:48+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Arizona on Tuesday after Secretary of State Adrian Fontes declined to turn over the state’s unredacted voter list, the latest in a series of such lawsuits the Trump administration has filed against states around the country.

The Justice Department also filed a similar lawsuit against Connecticut. The agency has said it is asking every state for its unredacted voter lists — unprecedented requests for versions of the voter rolls that contain personally identifying information such as voters’ full birthdates, full or partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information — as part of a Trump administration effort to exercise new oversight over the maintenance of state voter rolls.

Many states, led by officials of both political parties, have refused the Justice Department’s request, generally arguing that states are responsible for voter registration and are barred by state and federal law from sharing certain private information about voters. Election officials and voter watchdog groups have said the effort also appears to represent an attempt to build a national voter roll.

Fontes said on Dec. 19 that he had rejected a request from the Justice Department for the data, the third request he said he had received. Arizona voters “have important privacy rights that cannot be infringed because they choose to exercise their constitutionally protected voting rights,” he said.

The Justice Department has said it is entitled to the data under federal law, and withholding it interferes with its ability to exercise oversight and enforce federal election laws.

“Accurate voter rolls are essential to ensuring that American citizens’ votes count only once, and only with other eligible voters,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement announcing the lawsuits against Arizona and Connecticut.

The agency said in the statement that it has so far sued 23 states that have declined to turn over the lists. It has also sued Washington, D.C.

In an interview with “The Charlie Kirk Show” last month, Dhillon said 13 states are voluntarily turning over their voter rolls.

In the suit against Arizona, the department cited the Civil Rights Act’s requirement for states to turn over certain voting records to the Justice Department upon the attorney general’s request, and also cited the requirement for states to comply with two federal election laws, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

Fontes posted a video on social media responding to the lawsuit and social media posts from a Justice Department lawyer, telling the lawyer to “pound sand.” In a statement Tuesday, Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas said the state follows the law to ensure voters can participate “without fear that their information will be misused or exposed.”

This story has been updated.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Texas flagged some voters as ‘potential noncitizens’ but they had already provided proof of citizenship

2025-12-18T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas officials have now determined that 11 registered voters in Travis County flagged as potential noncitizens actually provided proof of citizenship while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID at the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to county leaders.

Votebeat earlier this month reported that hundreds of individuals the Texas Secretary of State’s Office identified as potential noncitizens had registered to vote at DPS, which requires proof of citizenship or legal presence.

State officials generated the list of potential noncitizens by checking the state’s voter roll — more than 18 million registered voters — against a federal database used to verify citizenship. The Trump administration overhauled the database, known as SAVE, this year, making it free for states to use and easier to search, and it has urged election officials around the country to use it to search for potential noncitizens on their voter rolls.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it had not initially checked the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the federal database against DPS records. State officials in October sent the list to county officials and directed them to investigate the citizenship status of those flagged registrants.

Many election officials and advocacy groups have questions about the accuracy of the results SAVE cross-checks generate. Advocacy groups including the League of Women Voters have sued over the changes to SAVE, and the lawsuit is pending in federal court.

Celia Israel, the Travis County’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said the verification that the 11 Travis County registrants had already provided proof that they were U.S. citizens is “confirmation that SAVE is not a reliable resource.”

In an emailed statement that stressed the need to “ensure that only eligible citizens participate” in elections, Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, described SAVE as “the preeminent data source on citizenship.” She noted that it is “a new tool for us. We are treating it as we would any data source, incorporating our normal checks and balances.”

DPS and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the SAVE database, did not respond to requests for comment.

Israel and her staff had for weeks asked both state agencies for help in verifying the flagged registrants’ citizenship status, hoping to prevent the removal of eligible voters from the rolls.

Earlier this month, DPS confirmed to Votebeat that the Secretary of State’s Office had requested information on 97 voters, matching the number flagged in Travis County, and Christina Adkins, the state’s elections division director, recently forwarded the results to county officials.

Adkins also told Israel that her office will run the list of 97 Travis County registrants initially identified as potential noncitizens through the SAVE database again “to see if there have been any updates to any individual statuses,” according to emails Votebeat obtained in response to a public records request.

“It would have made sense to have this from the beginning,” Israel said in an interview with Votebeat on Tuesday.

The Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to a question from Votebeat about whether it plans to check the entire list of 2,724 potential noncitizens against the DPS records.

Election officials are worried database is flagging eligible citizens

Votebeat sought information from 24 counties and to date, election officials who have responded confirmed they have collectively identified at least 33 U.S. citizens on the list. At least 218 people flagged, and potentially more, registered at DPS and should have been required to provide proof of citizenship that the agency should have on file, according to officials from 11 counties.

Israel said the new findings from the state raise questions about the accuracy of SAVE but also about DPS’s voter registration processes.

Her office initially found that 26 out of the 97 individuals had registered to vote at DPS. But the new information provided by the state shows that only eight out of the 26 who registered at DPS provided proof of citizenship to the agency.

The three other registrants on the Travis County list who had documented proof of citizenship on file with DPS had not registered to vote through the agency, Israel said, and 18 people who had registered through DPS nonetheless did not have documented proof of citizenship on file.

Israel said it’s not clear from the findings, when the registrants provided proof of legal presence to DPS. There’s a chance that some may have naturalized since. She said she is now seeking more details from the state, including dates of when the individuals provided their documents to DPS.

In October, when the Texas Secretary of State’s Office sent each county a list of voters it had identified as potential noncitizens, election officials were required to mail out notices to them seeking additional proof of citizenship. After 30 days, if there was no response, the registrations would be canceled. However, if proof is provided later to county officials, by law the registration must be reinstated immediately.

Responses to counties have been sparse, and at least one county official said that reports of arrests of U.S. citizens by federal immigration officials across the country could be a factor.

Remi Garza, the election administrator in Cameron County in the Rio Grande Valley, said he got a call from a family member of a registered voter who was hesitant to walk into a county building to turn in proof of citizenship documentation, even though they are an American citizen.

“They were afraid that there were going to be federal officers that would approach them while they were trying to resolve this,” Garza said.

The state flagged 68 potential noncitizens in Cameron County. Garza said multiple individuals had registered at DPS but declined to say exactly how many, citing his office’s ongoing investigation about the registrants’ eligibility. Garza said he plans to reach out to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to ask for help confirming whether any of the individuals flagged have already shown proof of citizenship.

His office is also sending out additional notices to the individuals that were flagged in the county who have yet to respond, he said.

“We’re going to do everything we can to restore an eligible voter’s right to cast a ballot,” Garza said. “Hopefully, if they see that we’re working diligently on their behalf, that they’ll understand that we’re there to facilitate the process, not to become a barrier or obstacle.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Hundreds of Texas voters flagged as potential noncitizens may have already proven their citizenship

2025-12-02T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

County election officials investigating the eligibility of 2,724 Texas voters flagged as potential noncitizens have so far found that hundreds of the voters registered through the state Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID.

DPS keeps copies of the proof of citizenship that registrants provide, such as birth certificates or passports. The agency also keeps copies of proof of lawful presence in the U.S., such as green cards, provided by immigrants.

But the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune it did not check the voters flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to verify citizenship.

And at least one county election official has asked Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson and DPS for help checking DPS’ records but has yet to obtain access to them, according to documents obtained by Votebeat through a public records request and an interview.

When Celia Israel, who oversees voter registration for Travis County, asked the state for help determining voters’ citizenship, Nelson’s office directed her to DPS, according to a letter Israel sent Nelson’s office last month. But that agency said it couldn’t help her directly, citing state law, records show.

Israel then wrote to Nelson and DPS officials, asking for help obtaining the records. Nelson responded to Israel Nov. 21 saying her office would “continue collaborating” with DPS.

Nelson’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat Monday asking whether it would seek to obtain DPS’ proof-of-citizenship records. But on Monday, DPS responded to a request for comment from Votebeat and said it had “recently received” a request from Nelson’s office for information on 97 people — also the number of potential noncitizens the state had asked Travis County to investigate. The agency didn’t confirm whether the request concerned those voters.

In an interview with Votebeat on Monday, Israel said she believes officials have a responsibility to check that data before placing a burden on voters. “These are tools that are at our disposal to ensure accuracy, and I think it’s our responsibility to use those tools before we ask a voter to demonstrate citizenship,” she said.

SAVE flagged several voters who registered at DPS

State officials generated the list of potential noncitizens by checking the state’s voter roll — more than 18 million registered voters — against a federal database used to verify citizenship. The Trump administration overhauled the database, known as SAVE, this year, making the database free for states to use and easier to search.

But experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE database’s accuracy and reliability, and advocacy groups have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the changes and how SAVE is being used.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office in October forwarded the results of the SAVE check to county election officials and instructed them to investigate the eligibility of the flagged voters.

Votebeat contacted 24 counties regarding the results of their investigations, and counties that responded said they have so far collectively confirmed the citizenship of 16 voters.

Several counties also reported significant numbers of voters who registered via DPS. In Collin County, 59 of the 109 people flagged by the state had done so. In Bexar County, the state flagged 201 voters; 39 had registered at DPS. And in Brazoria County, nearly half of the 48 flagged had registered at DPS.

In Denton County, the state flagged 84 registered voters. Frank Phillips, the county’s election administrator, told Votebeat that 12 of the flagged voters have confirmed their citizenship. Of the remaining flagged voters, 14 were registered by county officials in error, even though they had disclosed they were noncitizens and ineligible on the voter registration form. None of those individuals had voted, and their registrations have been canceled, he said.

Phillips said 37 of the flagged voters registered via DPS. Phillips also confirmed that the county has now canceled the registrations of 58 flagged voters who either failed to respond to the county’s notices or had the notices returned as undeliverable. Under state law, county officials must immediately restore the registrations if the voters later provide proof of citizenship, even if they do so at the polls on Election Day.

State officials want counties to investigate matches

In her response to Israel’s letter, Nelson said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ SAVE database “is the most current and accurate data set available to states when it comes to determining a voter’s citizenship.” Nelson said her office searched the SAVE database using voters’ first names, last names, dates of birth, and full Social Security numbers.

“Even though the data we received from SAVE is considered a strong match, we directed counties to treat them as weak matches in order to ensure that counties conducted their own investigation,” Nelson wrote, according to a copy of her letter obtained by Votebeat.

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said an example of a strong match that would result in county officials removing someone from the rolls without further investigation or notice would be a confirmed death record. In contrast, she said, in instructing the counties to treat the SAVE results as weak matches, the state is ensuring further investigation before voters’ registrations are canceled.

Texas is one of more than two dozen states, including Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina, using or planning to use the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ overhauled SAVE database to check voters’ eligibility. The USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Texas has struggled to identify noncitizens before

Every year, millions of Texans register to vote or update their voter registration information while obtaining a driver’s license or ID at DPS. In 2024, 3 million people registered to vote through the agency.

DPS began requiring proof of citizenship and lawful presence to obtain a driver’s license or state ID beginning in 2008. In 2011, Texas legislators made the requirement state law.

Israel and other election officials have raised concerns about the accuracy of the list of potential noncitizens forwarded by the Texas Secretary of State, citing issues in the wake of the state’s past attempts to flag noncitizens on the voter rolls.

Last year, months before the November 2024 election, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that 6,500 noncitizens had been removed from Texas voter rolls. A joint investigation by Votebeat, The Texas Tribune, and ProPublica later found Abbott’s numbers were inflated and, in some instances, wrong.

In 2019, the Secretary of State’s Office announced that it had identified 95,000 registered voters as potential noncitizens and said that more than half of them had previously cast ballots. But many of the voters in question turned out to be naturalized citizens flagged due to outdated data, and the state ultimately settled a related lawsuit by agreeing to new procedures.

Those new procedures, which were codified into law in 2021 through the sweeping Senate Bill 1, require that DPS share data monthly with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office in connection with individuals who provided proof that they were not U.S. citizens — such as a green card or work visa — when obtaining a driver’s license or state ID.

State officials run that data against the voter roll and identify individuals “who registered to vote before they presented documents at a DPS office indicating their non-citizenship,” according to a 2021 advisory from the office to counties.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Jolt Initiative hits back at Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in fight over voter registration

2025-11-11T20:52:54+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut the organization down.

Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that it had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.”

This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into its voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut it down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House.

“Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas,” said Mimi Marziani, a lawyer representing the nonprofit.

The origins of Paxton’s investigation of Jolt

In August 2024, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said on X that a friend had seen organizations registering immigrants to vote outside state driver’s license facilities in Fort Worth and Weatherford. But local officials, including the Parker County Republican chair, said there was no evidence backing the post or showing that anything illegal was happening.

Bartiromo’s debunked claims still prompted an attorney general investigation into whether organizations including Jolt were involved in registering noncitizens to vote.

Jolt then sued for a temporary restraining order, saying that Paxton’s probe would harm the organization and put its workers and volunteers at risk. In October 2024, both sides agreed to pause their legal fight, and Jolt was allowed to continue its work, while the courts addressed a different lawsuit involving the legal tool used by Paxton to investigate the group. The attorney general’s office said in its recent court filing that it has agreed to not issue another subpoena, instead opting to launch a new lawsuit.

In addition, Paxton announced earlier this year that his office is investigating cases of “potential noncitizens” casting more than 200 ballots in 2020 and 2022, which would be around one-thousandth of 1% of the votes cast during these periods.

Meanwhile, Texas counties are looking into more than 2,700 people on the voter rolls who were flagged as “potential noncitizens” after a search through a federal database. At least six of them have confirmed that they are U.S. citizens. Others were mistakenly added to the voter rolls by election officials, but had never voted, counties found.

Voters also recently approved a constitutional amendment adding language to the state’s constitution saying that a person who is not a U.S. citizen cannot vote in Texas. Noncitizen voting was already illegal under state law.

Why Texas sued Jolt

Following Bartiromo’s claims, the attorney general’s office sent an undercover agent to a Department of Motor Vehicles location near San Antonio to investigate by attempting to register a fake daughter — who wasn’t physically with him — to vote, according to Paxton’s Oct. 23 court filing. It said a Jolt volunteer deputy registrar instructed the agent on how to register his daughter, despite her absence.

But when the agent asked for a form to take his daughter, the Jolt volunteer said he could not let the agent have one. The agent said the volunteer then implied that he could register his daughter to vote, according to the filing.

“I stated in a question format that I couldn’t have one, and (the volunteer deputy registrar) replied that since I have her information, I could register her to vote, alluding to being a parent and that I had that right,” the agent wrote. “This was inferring that I could sign her voter registration card, and while (the VDR) made this statement he overtly looked away. This is not only incorrect but illegal per election code.”

Jolt disputed this claim about legality in its court filing.

Paxton’s filing didn’t provide evidence of Jolt registering noncitizens to vote. Instead, it said the group’s decision to hold voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”

“This is because U.S. citizens can already register to vote at any DMV with proof of citizenship,” the court document said. “Thus, there is no need for a VDR at such locations.”

Paxton brought the lawsuit in Tarrant County, saying that a “substantial part of the events” underlying its claims took place there.

“JOLT is a radical, partisan operation that has, and continues to, knowingly attempt to corrupt our voter rolls and weaken the voice of lawful Texas voters,” he said in a news release. “I will make sure they face the full force of the law.”

What Jolt says in its lawsuit

The nonprofit filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, asking a judge to stop Paxton’s state lawsuit on the grounds that it infringes on its rights under the First Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

In particular, Jolt said in a court filing that its volunteer didn’t do anything wrong because Texas’ election code does allow for a person to appoint their parent as “an agent” to “complete and sign a registration application” for them. The parent must also be a qualified voter or must have submitted a registration application and be eligible to vote, according to the code.

“Here, the State provides very few particularized factual allegations in its Petition to support its Motion for Leave, instead relying upon sweeping but unsupported claims about Jolt’s motives, beliefs and activities,” the group said in its initial response to Paxton’s lawsuit.

Jolt also said it will fight to defend its mission, adding that Paxton is “abusing his authority” in order to stop its voter registration drives.

“This is a systematic effort to dismantle the infrastructure of Latino civic engagement in Texas,” ⁨Jackie Bastard⁩, Jolt’s executive director, said in a news release.

Judge won’t halt audit of Maricopa County’s election technology

2025-11-06T19:58:39+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

What happened? A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Thursday rejected Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap’s request to halt an audit of the county’s voter registration system and election technology.

Judge Scott Blaney wrote that he was initially concerned voters’ personal information would be at risk, but was “credibly informed” that the county and vendor had a comprehensive nondisclosure agreement and the vendor’s personnel had undergone background checks. Blaney also found “that the Recorder has not established that the Board’s actions with regard to the assessment violate any Arizona statute.”

What’s the dispute? The emergency hearing over the audit of the voter registration system on Monday was one part of a larger legal fight between Heap and the county Board of Supervisors over how election duties and authority should be divided between them.

After Heap, a Republican, took office in January, he rejected an earlier agreement that governed how elections would be run, saying his predecessor, also a Republican, and the previous iteration of the Republican-controlled five-member board had taken away duties assigned to him under law.

Heap and the board negotiated for months before Heap filed suit on June 12, claiming that the supervisors “engaged in an unlawful attempt to seize near-total control over the administration of elections.” The supervisors then countersued.

Heap asked Blaney to issue an immediate order to halt the review of the county’s voter registration system by a vendor, the Intersect Group, and suspend its contract. Heap’s chief information officer, Bryan Colby, in court documents said he was concerned that the vendor would have “unfettered access to sensitive election systems.”

Heap’s attorney, James Rogers, argued in court on Monday that “only the recorder has the authority to grant the access” that the contractor has.

The Board of Supervisors’ attorney, Kory Langhofer, said the law allows access for a “government official doing his job,” and that includes contractors.

“It doesn’t say a W2, salaried employee with pension,” Langhofer said. “It just says, okay, government official. You can be a government official on contract.”

Blaney wrote in his ruling that he was particularly concerned about giving the Intersect Group access to voter data typically kept confidential through a separate program for domestic violence victims, police officers, and judges, but he “was credibly informed” in the hearing that the vendor would not have access to that.

The county Board of Supervisors said in court filings that it had ordered the review in May to determine how best to split the voter registration database to do the different election functions of the recorder and the board. The recorder is typically responsible for early voting and voter registration, while the board is responsible for candidate and campaign filings, in-person voting, vote centers, hiring of elections workers, and the processing and tabulation of ballots.

The board said that the Intersect Group was carefully vetted and signed a nondisclosure agreement. Thomas Basile, the board’s attorney, said consultants who access information such as birthdates and Social Security numbers go through the same background checks as temporary election workers.

Heap and the supervisors have also clashed over a separate audit of the county’s election processes by the accounting firm BerryDunn, documents obtained by Votebeat show.

Supervisors board Chairman Tom Galvin said in an Oct. 1 letter to Heap that the recorder had ignored auditors even though he had agreed in meetings that such an audit was necessary.

Heap responded saying he objected in part because of the pending litigation, which could fundamentally change the county’s election administration system.

Langhofer threatened in an Oct. 22 letter to subpoena testimony and documents from Heap.

Heap spokesperson, Judy Keane, confirmed to Votebeat on Oct. 31 that the office will provide requested documents to the BerryDunn auditors.

What happens now? A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for January.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the dispute between Heap and Maricopa County supervisors:

Maricopa County recorder turns over texts sought by Votebeat about his fight for election authority, Sept. 22, 2025
Democratic Maricopa County supervisor calls for corruption investigation into recorder, July 30, 2025
Text messages show how Maricopa County recorder pressured supervisors for control of elections, July 30, 2025
Arizona budget proposes millions for Maricopa County recorder as he clashes with supervisors, June 20, 2025
Maricopa County recorder sues supervisors over election powers, June 12, 2025
Maricopa County poised to hire national consulting firm for review of election procedures, May 20, 2025
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, a public ‘battle’ for control of elections, February 27, 2025

Contact Votebeat at az.tips@votebeat.org.

Judge rules against Trump’s call for proof-of-citizenship requirement for voters

2025-10-31T21:15:08+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

A federal judge Friday permanently blocked a key provision of the sweeping executive order on elections President Donald Trump issued in March.

The ruling, from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, blocks his direction to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to take steps to require documentary proof of citizenship from people registering to vote.

“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

What’s the dispute?

Multiple nonprofit groups and Democratic Party committees sued Trump, the EAC, and other federal agencies over the order he signed in March calling for broad changes in how elections are administered. The plaintiffs argue that the Constitution does not grant the president authority to set rules for elections.

The lawsuits challenge multiple provisions of the executive order, including one that directs the EAC to add a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form; another requiring the agency to withhold federal funds from states that don’t comply with its requirements; and one prohibiting states from accepting mail ballots postmarked before Election Day, but received afterwards.

The Justice Department argued the order is legal under existing federal laws.

Kollar-Kotelly in April issued a preliminary injunction halting some provisions of executive order, including this provision. Her order Friday made that permanent.

Who are the plaintiffs?

Two of the lawsuits were filed by a collection of nonprofit groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, and others. Another was filed on behalf of Democratic national party committees and leadership. Additional lawsuits challenging provisions in the executive order are pending in other federal courts, including one by Democratic attorneys general in 19 states and another by the states of Oregon and Washington. A second federal judge also issued a preliminary injunction in June in the case filed by Democratic attorneys general.

What are they asking for?

The lawsuits asked the judge to stop the government from implementing or enforcing the provisions of the executive order under challenge, and, ultimately, to find them unconstitutional.

What happens now?

Kollar-Kotelly has yet to rule on challenges to additional provisions, and the remaining lawsuits in connection with the executive order are still pending. The Justice Department did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on the ruling, which could be appealed.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the challenges to Trump’s executive order on regulating elections:

Trump’s executive order on elections is partly blocked by federal court, April 24, 2025
Judge hears challenges to Trump’s executive order on regulating elections, April 17, 2025
With Trump’s executive order, thousands of military voters could see their rights curtailed, April 10, 2025
First lawsuits against Trump’s election order cite text of Constitution, April 7, 2025
Democratic attorneys general sue Trump over elections executive order, April 3, 2025
New Trump order targets barcodes on ballots. Why? And what will that mean? March 28, 2025
Trump orders an overhaul of how elections are run, inviting a likely legal challenge, March 25, 2025

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Texas counties look into ‘potential noncitizens’ on voter rolls. Here’s what they’re finding.

2025-10-31T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Election officials across Texas are investigating the eligibility of 2,724 registered voters flagged as “potential noncitizens” after the Secretary of State’s Office checked the state’s voter rolls against a federal database used to verify citizenship.

The inquiries are still in the early stages, and county officials have not yet confirmed the citizenship status of the vast majority of the flagged voters.

But at least six people listed as potential noncitizens have confirmed that they are, in fact, U.S. citizens, election officials told Votebeat: four in Denton County, and one each in Bexar and Brazoria counties.

Votebeat has so far contacted 24 counties, including the state’s most populous, seeking details about the flagged voter registrations, and has gotten responses from nine counties.

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, told Votebeat that election officials across the state want more information on the federal database’s sources and how it works.

“A lot of counties don’t feel comfortable just blindly canceling voters without really knowing how names have shown up on the SAVE database,” McGinn said, referring to Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, the search tool that states use to check residents’ eligibility for public benefits.

The Department of Homeland Security recently overhauled SAVE to make it easier for states to use it to screen their voter rolls for potential noncitizens. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Alicia Pierce, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson, said in a statement that counties have been able to prove citizenship “for a handful of these voters, which means the process is working exactly as it should.” She said that flagged voters have 30 days to respond to a notice from their county, and this process “will not affect anyone’s ability to vote in Tuesday’s election.”

Registrations submitted through Texas DPS are flagged

Election officials said that at least 193 of the flagged voters — across seven counties that together had a total of 565 — submitted their registration applications through the Texas Department of Public Safety. The agency requires proof of citizenship from anyone who wants to register to vote there, so some election officials said they are wondering how any noncitizens could have successfully registered through DPS.

Pierce referred questions to DPS, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. During a legislative hearing in March, a DPS official told lawmakers that in order to register to vote at the agency, applicants must be a U.S. citizen and be at least 17 years, 10 months old.

“These requirements are actually programmed into our system, and they can’t be bypassed by an employee,” the DPS official said. “So if you don’t meet those requirements, you don’t get presented with the voter registration question.”

In a declaration filed Wednesday as part of a federal lawsuit challenging the overhaul of SAVE, Chris Davis, the voter registration director for Travis County, said that a quarter of the 97 people flagged there had registered at DPS.

County officials are required by law to mail notices to the flagged registrants seeking their citizenship documentation, and some have already sent the notices. If there’s no response after 30 days, the person’s registration is canceled. Pierce said counties have been advised to treat the voters flagged by SAVE as they would “any other data set.”

If county officials receive the documentation, they must send a copy to the state to be shared with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Secretary of State’s Office told counties, according to a document filed in federal court as part of the lawsuit.

The election officials in Denton, Bexar, and Brazoria counties said the six voters whose citizenship they confirmed had responded to notices by showing a U.S. passport or naturalization documents.

Davis said Travis County is investigating each person flagged and has yet to mail out notices. In his court declaration, he said he’s concerned that the list his county received “is flawed” and that voters could be improperly dropped from the voter rolls.

Frank Phillips, the Denton County elections administrator, told Votebeat that one of the four flagged voters he checked on had become a U.S. citizen a month ago, but three others were naturalized between 2020 and 2023.

He added that he fears the mailed notices won’t be delivered or that voters won’t respond to them. “If they are citizens, their registration is going to get canceled, but it shouldn’t be,” he said.

Some added to the voter rolls in error by county officials

Texas has a paper-based voter registration system, which requires that election officials manually enter the information from each application they receive by mail or in person. Data entry errors are common.

In at least seven counties — including Bexar, Dallas, Collin, and Denton — election officials said people who submitted an application had accurately noted on the form that they were not U.S. citizens, but were nonetheless added to the voter roll in error by county officials. Those registrations have been canceled, and none of the 94 people involved had cast ballots, county officials said.

Aside from the people who attested that they weren’t citizens, officials in Bexar and Denton counties have confirmed that so far, they found one person in each county who was not a U.S. citizen and canceled their registrations. Those two people had never voted, the officials said.

Changes make SAVE free and easier for states to use

States have used SAVE for years to help determine whether people are eligible for benefits. However, access to the data for states was costly and required using a person’s immigrant ID number, which election officials don’t often have access to.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration revamped SAVE so that states could use it more easily to check their voter rolls for noncitizens using Social Security numbers, and could submit requests in batches instead of one at a time. States don’t have to pay to use it anymore.

But some experts have questioned the accuracy and reliability of the data, pointing to how quickly the changes to SAVE were made. They’ve also raised concerns about how the federal government is using the data uploaded by states, and whether using the tool puts people’s privacy or voting rights at risk. In addition, multiple audits and analyses have shown that the Social Security Administration’s citizenship information, one of the sources that SAVE calls on, is often outdated or incomplete, especially for people who became naturalized citizens.

Texas obtained access to SAVE in March, and said in May that, through SAVE, it had identified 33 potential noncitizens who had voted in the November 2024 election and referred them to the Texas Attorney General’s Office for investigation.

Last week, on the first day of early voting for the constitutional amendment election, Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced her office had run the state’s entire voter roll through it, or more than 18 million registered voters.

In the announcement, Nelson directed counties to conduct “rigorous investigations to determine if any voter is ineligible.” She said SAVE “has proven to be a critically important data set and one of many that we will continue to use in Texas to ensure that only qualified voters cast a ballot in our elections.”

Days later, Nelson touted a letter from President Donald Trump recognizing her as one of the first secretaries of state to “step up and protect the integrity of our elections by using the federal SAVE database.”

On Monday, Texas filed a motion seeking to intervene in the lawsuit challenging the use of SAVE, saying it needs continued access to comply with state and federal requirements for maintaining its voter list.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania criminal case highlights problems with third-party voter registration drives

2025-10-30T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, workers with an Arizona-based consulting firm conducting a voter registration drive tried to submit fake registrations in Pennsylvania in an effort to earn more money, the state attorney general is alleging in a criminal complaint filed this month.

The case grew out of investigations in a few counties into voter registration applications that prosecutors had flagged as irregular before the election.

But election officials across the commonwealth say the problems with these types of third-party voter registration drives aren’t limited to this incident of alleged fraud. Rather, they say, systemic problems with the way third-party voter registration organizations operate often result in street canvassers submitting incomplete or invalid registrations.

Even when it doesn’t rise to the level of fraud, they say, the practice floods county election offices with extra work to sort through these registrations, and the problem could be mitigated via changes to state law.

Registration drives are a big source of new applications

Every presidential election year, non-governmental organizations and political parties flock to swing states like Pennsylvania to register as many voters as possible, often hiring contractors to manage the outreach to voters and employ local canvassers to collect forms. The applications they submit, several local election officials told Votebeat, can be a mixed bag.

“Some of them are valid and some of them raise red flags,” said Jim Allen, election director for Delaware County.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, nearly 440,000 voter registration applications came from registration drives in 2024, which represents the third-largest source of applications, behind those received through PennDOT, the state’s department of transportation, and online registrations. Roughly two-thirds of those were physical paper applications.

Those often come from canvassers whom potential voters might encounter holding clipboards outside grocery stores, shopping malls, or fairs.

Many applications collected this way turn out to be invalid, or contain incomplete information, which forces county workers to track down the applicant, election officials said. Regardless of how poorly filled out or duplicative each application is, county workers have to process each one and determine whether the individual should be added to the voter rolls. Much of that work is being done during the critical few weeks before the election, when workers also have myriad other tasks to complete.

David Voye, manager of Allegheny County’s Division of Elections, said that during a presidential election year, the county can receive a few hundred applications from voter registration drives every day.

“That’s when it becomes overwhelming for our staff members,” he said. “I would say maybe 30% are ineligible, duplicate, (or) hard to read.”

Allen said any large-scale voter registration drive brings these issues.

“They’re always well-meaning attempts to approach voters about registering to vote or for a mail-in ballot, but sometimes the language on the form or the letter can lead to issues,” he said, “or other times just human error or overzealousness can lead to an excessive number of duplicate or invalid registrations that we have to sort through.” He said he encountered similar issues at a previous election administration job in Chicago.

The applications also frequently come in large batches, as organizations submit all the registrations they have collected over several weeks. Or they arrive on the registration deadline, as was the case for those received from the group now at the center of state Attorney General Dave Sunday’s case, Arizona-based Field+Media Corps.

Complaint says canvassers were paid for collecting more forms

A big part of that case centers on a Pennsylvania law that says it is illegal to pay canvassers on the basis of how many voter registration forms they collect.

The logic behind that law is “if you offer pay per registration, it creates a perverse incentive for someone to make them up to do them faster,” said Forrest Lehman, election director in Lycoming County.

According to affidavits in criminal complaints that the attorney general filed in court in Lancaster County last week, seven people associated with Field+Media Corps last year allegedly faked information on voter registration forms in order to meet quotas for registration forms or boost their pay. The attorney general stressed that investigators found no political or partisan motive.

Investigators said canvassers received bonuses for extra applications they submitted or were threatened with termination if they didn’t gather enough, according to the criminal complaint.

One canvasser, who was not charged, told investigators that her pay reflected how many forms she collected, the attorney general alleged in court documents. For example, the documents say, she told investigators that three forms would net $40, and if a canvasser collected 15 to 16 forms in a single shift, they would be paid as if they had worked 10 hours, even if they had worked less. She also stated that canvassers could be fired if they did not meet a goal of 1.5 to two registration forms per hour.

According to the affidavits, one canvasser who was eventually fired for not meeting the quota told investigators that on some days, she would “make up names and information to meet the quota, due to fear of losing her job.”

In total, one organizer and six street canvassers were charged. No charges were brought against the company itself or executive leadership. None of the seven defendants had entered a plea as of noon Wednesday.

“We are confident that the motive behind these crimes was personal financial gain, and not a conspiracy or organized effort to tip any election for any one candidate or party,” Sunday said in a press release about the charges. “Pennsylvanians should have peace of mind that the election process worked in this case.”

The suspected fraudulent applications, in Berks, Lancaster, and York counties, were announced just before the 2024 election. At the time, county officials said no voter had been fraudulently registered.

In the affidavits, the attorney general said the forms submitted in these counties were fraudulent, and some also contained incomplete information or were duplicative.

The website and associated email accounts for Field+Media Corps, meanwhile, have been deactivated. Messages left on a number listed for the company, as well as sent to the company’s LinkedIn page, went unanswered. No response was received to an email sent to an address associated with Francisco Heredia, the Mesa, Arizona, City Council member who was listed as the company’s CEO.

Heredia last year told Votebeat and Spotlight PA that Field+Media Corps has a zero tolerance policy for workers who submit fraudulent forms, and had said the company would fully cooperate with any investigation in Pennsylvania. Court documents note the company provided “numerous records.”

How more regulation could help

Lehman said the state could help by adopting a law that makes it illegal to hold on to voter registration forms for weeks before turning them in. Field+Media Corps collected thousands of forms that it held on to for weeks, before submitting them in the final days before Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline, according to court documents.

“Then those voters’ registrations are getting delayed, and they don’t know if they’re registered to vote until the very last minute because we’re processing all these applications,” Lehman said.

Other states already have such laws on the books.

Some counties are already trying to encourage earlier registration submissions. Centre County, home to Penn State University, adopted a policy earlier this year that, among other things, urges organizations to submit forms within 10 days of collection. A spokesperson for the county said the policy was adopted “to prevent confusion or issues with voter registration drive organizers.”

Both Voye, of Allegheny County, and Allen, of Delaware County, said they appreciated the work that third-party organizations do to try to register eligible voters, but they said these issues can cause stress for election workers, particularly in the busy few weeks leading up to Election Day.

Voye thinks the number of poor-quality forms would drop if more groups did their registrations on tablets or laptops. The Department of State has a program that allows organizations to use their own apps to submit voter registration applications directly to county election offices, so county workers don’t have to manually enter the information from paper forms. The county workers still make the final determination on who is eligible to register.

But Allen said he still sees issues with the applications coming through this system, and thinks the state should have a way for counties to see which groups are submitting bad applications, or possibly revoke their access to the program.

The access that the state offers “makes it easy for abuse, so there has to be a degree of accountability,” Allen said.

The terms of use for the program require organizations to “take all precautions to reduce and mitigate fraudulent or erroneous voter registration applications and implement measures to avoid such submissions.”

The department said that on the rare occasions when there appeared to be an issue with applications submitted by a group through the program, it suspended access “until proper quality controls were put in place.”

“There is a lot of good work that comes out of these organizations, but there is also some bad paperwork that comes out,” Allen said. “Our desire is to see them take a little more caution.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Trump administration proposal for online voter registration form raises concerns

2025-10-27T23:33:47+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

State election officials are raising legal and practical concerns about a new Trump administration plan to create a digital version of the existing federal voter registration form.

Under the proposal, the federal government would both verify voter identity and check citizenship against a system run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before making the applications available to states.

The proposal — discussed on recent calls between the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, federal officials working to design the new tool, and state officials — would for the first time allow the federal voter registration form to be filed online. Currently, voters must submit the form on paper. Most states are required to accept the federal registration form, just as they would their own state-specific forms.

Notes summarizing a Oct. 17 call for members of the National Association of State Election Directors said association members “representing states of both parties expressed serious concerns with this project not complying with state law” and also that “the developers do not seem to want to spend the time to understand election official concerns.”

A very small percentage of voters use this form to register, noted Leslie Reynolds, executive director of the National Association of Secretaries of State in an Oct. 23 call, something election officials confirmed. “We’re coming into a federal election year, and if this goes awry, that could be a big deal,” Reynolds said.

Among the concerns raised in the call, notes and recordings show, were how the proposal would align with federal and state laws, what information the federal government would retain about applicants, and whether people could be inadvertently disenfranchised.

Users of the digital form would be required to verify their identity via a federal website that requires a passport, driver’s license or state identification, or a Social Security number, federal officials told state officials during calls this month, according to a recording of one call and notes summarizing the other that were obtained by Votebeat, as well as people who were on the calls.

EAC Chairman Donald Palmer said the agency “is facilitating discussion with state election officials on modernizing an accessible tool to provide a verifiable digital registration option with a new online experience to registrants using the Federal Form,” and stressed that the existing form option would remain available.

The U.S. General Services Administration, which helps the government with technology needs, referred a request for comment to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond before publication.

Trump administration asserts authority over voter registration

The federal government’s goal is to modernize the form and make it easier to use, said Akash Bobba, the federal developer who spoke on the Oct. 23 call organized by NASS, according to the recording. Bobba said the project is part of the National Design Studio, which President Donald Trump launched through an executive order earlier this year.

The EAC’s executive director, Brianna Schletz, “emphasized that the EAC is not trying to replace what the states are already doing, they’re just trying to make it easier for those who do want to use the federal form,” according to the NASED notes summarizing the Oct. 17 call.

State and local election officials usually oversee voter registration. States have historically resisted federal efforts to expand control over elections, including former President Joe Biden’s order directing federal agencies to engage in voter registration, which drew fierce opposition from Republicans.

But the Trump administration has been more aggressive in targeting voter registration procedures as part of a sweeping overhaul of how elections are run. It has pushed for requiring documentary proof of citizenship for all applicants, and scrutinized states over their management of voter rolls, though federal courts have blocked some efforts.

It revamped a DHS tool known as SAVE to allow state election officials to more easily check their voter rolls against immigration records. Several states, including Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, are already doing so, while others have pushed back on the administration’s efforts.

Election officials press for details and answers

Election officials who heard the proposal for the online voter registration form asked numerous questions about how it would align with state laws, according to the recording and notes. Previous efforts to create a universal registration form have faltered over the same challenge: complying with a patchwork of state requirements.

They also pressed for details about the new tool, many of which Bobba and EAC officials said they couldn’t immediately provide, according to the recording and notes, though they did say that states would receive all the information included on the paper registration form now.

Bobba couldn’t immediately say how much information the EAC or other federal agencies would retain, according to the recording of the NASS call. He said “clear data retention policies” would be given to the states ahead of implementation, and that he couldn’t offer information immediately about how SAVE would store the information. “I don’t know what they retain and what they are logging,” he said.

David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, called the efforts “an absolute and complete waste of time.” Very few people use the federal form to register, he said, and he would be “extremely surprised” if any state — “even Trump-aligned states” — promoted a registration method they don’t control.

Michelle Tassinari, director and legal counsel for the Massachusetts elections division in the secretary of state’s office, asked whether such a program would require a change to federal law. “The voter is no longer submitting an application to the state — which is what the NVRA allows them to do,” she said, according to the recording. Reached for comment, she said in an email that the proposal would require states to obtain the applications from the EAC, rather than requiring the voter to submit the application to the appropriate election office.

A federal official said they would take that under advisement.

Camden Kelliher, the EAC’s general counsel, told attendees on the Oct. 17 call that the online form, which would require the additional verification steps, would not replace the existing paper version, according to notes summarizing the call, but would provide voters a new way to fill it out. Schletz noted that the online tool would need disclaimer language about those steps “as well as to accommodate usage of SAVE.”

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, confirmed in an interview with Votebeat that she had been on the NASS call and said she has “serious concerns” about whether Maine could accept the online federal form.

The proposal, as outlined, she said “is not an appropriate role for the federal government under the Constitution and may lead to disenfranchising people because of the lack of coordination with state requirements and deadlines.”

Pennsylvania Department of State spokeswoman Amy Gulli said that Congress had made clear “that voters, who must be citizens, must be permitted to register with the Federal Form without providing documentary proof of citizenship.”

Could voters be misled?

The recording and notes also show that election officials are concerned that any delays in federal identity checks through login.gov or SAVE could lead voters to think they’re registered when they have actually missed the deadline. They also asked whether vote.gov, the federal government website that would host the tool, could prioritize directing users to state voter registration options.

Officials raised further concerns about state requirements for “wet signatures” rather than digital ones, saying the online form might not satisfy those laws. States often rely on that signature over time for other purposes, such as validating absentee ballot requests. In 2023, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Texas’ wet-signature requirement after a nonprofit group challenged it in hopes of creating such a national form.

All but eight states permit online voter registration, but many restrict it to people who have a state driver’s license or ID, and they rely on signatures on file with other state agencies. Some states allow digital signatures; others don’t. On the Oct. 23 call, according to the recording, Bobba and others said they were still working on how to handle such requirements, but signaled that they understood all states might not be able to accept the form.

In such cases, and in six states that aren’t required to accept the federal form — Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming — users would be directed to other registration options, they said.

Bobba said during the NASS call that developers are still working with DHS on how the tool will interface with SAVE, but hope to pilot it with some states within months. Heather Honey, a deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at DHS, was also on the NASS call, NASS officials said on the recording. DHS did not respond to an email requesting comment before publication.

Schletz told attendees on the Oct. 17 call that current discussions are “informal,” and that EAC commissioners will later vote on whether to stay involved.

Maria Benson, a spokeswoman for NASS, said via email that the organization will invite those working on the project to another call with the association’s elections committee “in the near future. Until then, we will continue to urge the EAC to closely collaborate with Chief Election Officials as this project progresses.”

Editorial Director Jessica Huseman contributed to this article.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Suspended voter registrations in Arizona’s Pinal County top 1,100 after state error

2025-10-22T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Thousands of voters in Maricopa County caught up in a state record-keeping error won’t yet lose their voting rights for not providing proof of citizenship, county officials now say. But Pinal County has suspended more than a thousand voters affected by the error who have tried to update their registration without providing the proof.

How Maricopa and Pinal handle these affected voters will determine whether they can cast ballots in jurisdictional elections scheduled for Nov. 4. Arizona counties began sending ballots to voters on Oct. 8, and Maricopa and Pinal counties are running their elections entirely by mail.

The suspended Pinal County voters will not receive ballots in the mail. They can cast a provisional ballot, but would have to request it in person.

The state announced the error in September 2024, and since then, election officials have been wrestling with how best to handle it. The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office told 83,000 voters in June that they had 90 days to respond with a birth certificate, passport, or other document, or it would classify them federal-only voters who could vote only in presidential and congressional races.

The 90-day period ended Sept. 25.

But Judy Keane, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Recorder, said the office will keep all voters affected by the error in their current voting status for the Nov. 4 election.

“At the same time, the office is diligently working to verify the citizenship status of the approximately 83,000 impacted voters to ensure every lawful voter can participate in the 2026 elections and beyond,” Keane said in an email to Votebeat.

The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office’s new approach aligns with an opinion Attorney General Kris Mayes issued in August, aimed at creating a uniform statewide policy. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes requested the opinion after Votebeat reported that recorders around the state had been treating affected voters in different ways.

Most counties appear to have followed the opinion, which said county recorders don’t have the authority to suspend voters’ registrations or switch them to the federal-only rolls if they fail to respond to notices. Mayes’ opinion doesn’t have the force of law, but Fontes’ office has advised counties to follow it.

How Maricopa and Pinal policies differed

The error originated with a problem in Arizona Motor Vehicle Division records. Roughly 200,000 longtime residents statewide were listed as having provided proof of U.S. citizenship, which is a requirement to vote in state and local elections in Arizona, even though they had not done so or been asked to. The discovery set off a scramble among Arizona counties to notify voters, request proof of citizenship, and determine how to handle voters who didn’t respond.

While Maricopa County told voters it would move them to the federal-only rolls if they didn’t provide proof of citizenship, Pinal County took a different approach.

The Pinal County Recorder’s Office did not disturb the existing registrations of voters caught in the glitch unless they tried to update their registrations without providing proof of citizenship. At that point, if those voters didn’t provide the required proof, their registrations were effectively suspended.

Pinal County based its policy on a state law that requires election officials to reject voter registration applications filed on a state form if they do not include proof of citizenship. The county interpreted that law to also include voters updating their registrations for changes of address, name, or party affiliation, sweeping in the voters affected by the state error.

Lisa James, a spokeswoman for the Pinal County Recorder’s Office, said the office had suspended 1,106 Pinal County voters as of Oct. 9, under its interpretation of state law.

That means those voters will have their voting status set to “unregistered/not registered” pending proof of citizenship, and they will not be able to vote until they provide the citizenship proof, James confirmed.

But these voters’ registrations are not canceled, James said. She added that the recorder’s office has been trying to reach affected voters to let them know what they need to do to reactivate their registration. She said the outreach process started with elections last month: a special election in the 7th Congressional District and one to incorporate San Tan Valley.

“Everybody wants everybody to be able to vote,” James said.

James also said the county has asked the state attorney general’s office whether its approach is correct.

Richie Taylor, a spokesman for Mayes, said his office is “speaking with the county on the matter but I don’t anticipate another opinion.”

Suspended Pinal voters must request provisional ballot in person

Affected voters in Pinal County will still be able to cast a provisional ballot, which will be counted as long as they provide proof of citizenship by 7 p.m. on Election Day, County Recorder Dana Lewis said.

Since the Nov. 4 election will be only by mail, voters will have to visit the Pinal County Recorder’s Office in Florence or one of its satellite offices to obtain a provisional ballot, Lewis said.

Those sites are staffed by election officials who can accept the proof from voters, Lewis told Votebeat by email. “We will be able to capture the required documentation on Election Day,” she wrote.

Fontes said in an emailed statement that he’s glad to see Maricopa County align with the attorney general’s legal opinion and not shift voters to the federal-only rolls. He called the decision “smart and fair,” and said affected voters should be permitted to cast ballots in the upcoming jurisdictional elections.

The problems caused by the MVD’s errors “were not the fault of voters,” Fontes said.

Contact Votebeat at az.tips@votebeat.org.

Texas election officials ask state to halt rollout of updated TEAM voter registration system

2025-10-17T21:49:35+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Groups representing election officials across Texas are asking the state to halt the rollout of its updated voter registration system and address issues that they say “directly impact key parts of the election and jury process.”

The groups outlined their complaints in a letter sent Friday to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson.

County election officials across the state have for months reported problems that they say began when the state overhauled its voter registration system, known as TEAM, in July. Those issues contributed to a backlog of tens of thousands of voter registration applications, Votebeat reported, though that now has nearly been cleared. Election officials also said issues with TEAM were affecting their preparations for the upcoming constitutional amendment election.

Alicia Pierce, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson, told Votebeat the office has received the letter and is reviewing it. “Our focus right now is making sure every county is ready for the Nov. 4 election.”

Groups cite TEAM’s inconsistent performance

The letter to Nelson was sent by four associations representing Texas county election administrators, county and district clerks, county judges and commissioners, and tax assessor-collectors, all of whom have roles in administering elections.

In the letter to Nelson, as well as in interviews with at least a dozen election officials, they said that while using the new system and inputting voter registration applications, voters’ previous addresses override their new ones, their voting precincts don’t populate correctly, and sometimes the registration information doesn’t save. Officials also said the system is inconsistent, working properly one day but slowly the next.

“Counties have seen substantial delays in processing voter registration applications and updating registration status,” the letter to Nelson said. “Many election officials have observed TEAM incorrectly generating the voter registration list, which compromises election security by complicating the update of poll books and the identification of voters who have received a mail ballot.”

Now, with early voting set to start Monday, election officials across the state want Nelson’s office to resolve existing problems before rolling out any new system features.

“Without these changes, the current state of the TEAM rollout creates undue risk to voters and the integrity of election officials,” the letter says.

The officials also said in the letter that the issues are affecting several smaller Texas counties that rely on TEAM to pull their jury list. “District clerks have documented the new system solely pulling registered voters as jurors instead of those qualified to serve on a jury,” it says.

Calling for solutions and a clearer timeline

Chris McGinn, the executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said the associations sent the letter after weeks of meeting with the state, presenting the problems, and waiting for solutions.

“It’s now the week before early voting and we were still dealing with significant issues,” McGinn said. “We felt it was important to put all of this on the record for the secretary of state.”

In their letter, election officials asked the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to provide a clear timeline for TEAM bug fixes and publish weekly status updates detailing resolved and outstanding issues. Specifically, officials are seeking “clear communication about the problems that have been solved,” the letter says.

During early voting and the canvass, election officials want the state to establish “a dedicated incident response team,” staffed with technicians who can implement emergency fixes.

Democratic lawmakers apply pressure

Some lawmakers are also asking Nelson to take action.

On Thursday, six state representatives from the Austin area sent a letter to Nelson that says the issues with the system aren’t the fault of the county election officials, who she says have been “working tirelessly within the limits of the tools provided.”

The responsibility, the letter says, “rests with the Secretary of State’s Office to ensure that the system functions as promised, that training on the TEAM software is accessible and thorough, and that voters are not denied their constitutional right to participate in their democracy.”

The letter was authored by state Rep. Vikki Goodwin, and signed by state Reps. Donna Howard, Sheryl Cole, Gina Hinojosa, James Talerico, and Lulu Flores, all Democrats.

Nelson responded that her office had anticipated technical problems with the rollout of such a big update, which involved “the migration of over 20 million records and extensive training with our county partners.”

Nelson also said the financial instability of a voter registration vendor used by multiple counties unexpectedly complicated the rollout, prompting several counties to abruptly switch to TEAM.

“Our staff has completed onboarding 11 of those counties, including Bexar County, onto our TEAM system,” Nelson wrote, according to a copy of her response provided by Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for her office. “We did this in a matter of weeks for a process that usually takes months.”

To check the status of your voter registration application, go to VoteTexas.gov or call your local voter registrar.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She’s based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin Elections Commission challenges order requiring voter citizenship checks

2025-10-06T21:05:57+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Update, Oct. 7, 2025: Waukesha County Judge Michael Maxwell scheduled a hearing on the motion for Oct. 31 andstayed the part of his rulingrequiring new registrants to have their citizenship verified until he decides the DOJ’s overall motion.

Wisconsin state agencies on Monday asked a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge to stay his ruling requiring election officials to verify the citizenship of existing voters and those seeking to register.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice filed the motion on behalf of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Department of Transportation, and related state officials. In it, the respondents called Judge Michael Maxwell’s Friday ruling “impermissively vague,” because the order bars election officials from processing new registrations without “verification” of applicants’ citizenship but doesn’t define the verification process.

The filing says that any new citizenship verification process for online voter registration would require months of testing and development, and that disabling the electronic registration system in the meantime would conflict with state law requiring that system to exist.

“The impact would be enormous: Wisconsin receives an average of more than 200 online voter registrations per day,” the filing states, citing a declaration from Robert Kehoe, the election commission’s deputy administrator.

The state Justice Department repeated its argument that a citizenship verification system would exceed what state law requires, noting that the Legislature has expressly required proof of residency for new registrants but not proof of citizenship.

The motion further contends Maxwell exceeded his authority by effectively prohibiting local election officials from processing new registrations without verifying citizenship, even though local officials aren’t party to the case.

The state asked for a stay pending appeal and requested a decision by Oct. 6 or an immediate administrative stay while the court considers the motion.

The election commission declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, spokesperson Emilee Miklas said. Attorney Kevin Scott, who represents a Pewaukee voter who brought the case against the commission, said he was hopeful that WEC would “do the right thing” and implement the ruling.

Local election officials did not appear to be rushing to implement Friday’s order. Paulina Gutiérrez, the Milwaukee Election Commission’s executive director, said she’s monitoring the case. Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs said that she and other clerks weren’t immediately stressing over implementing the decision since it was likely to be appealed.

“We wait until something is final, and that’s when we start to pay attention,” Fochs said.

Republicans have praised the lower-court ruling as part of their focus on the issue of noncitizen voting. While there’s no evidence of widespread voting by noncitizens, GOP lawmakers have used the issue to call for citizenship checks of all voters, even though such measures can wrongly flag eligible U.S. citizens.

In a separate filing, Kehoe said the commission’s four-person software team could create a separate system, but that would mean choosing between keeping the existing online registration system — which doesn’t verify citizenship — and shutting it down entirely, despite hundreds of Wisconsin residents seeking to register every day.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin must verify citizenship of registered voters and new applicants, judge rules

2025-10-03T22:56:52+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

What happened?

A Waukesha County judge on Friday ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission to determine whether any noncitizens are registered to vote and to stop accepting voter registrations without verifying that the applicant is a U.S. citizen.

What’s the dispute?

A Pewaukee resident, represented by conservative attorneys, filed a lawsuit last year seeking to require the election commission to verify citizenship of registered voters and applicants. The suit also sought to force the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to compare its citizenship information against voter rolls.

The election commission opposed the initial request, saying that no state law called for requiring documented proof of citizenship. It also argued that the DOT has no obligation to match citizenship data with voter records.

Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Maxwell rejected the commission’s argument, saying that the agency is failing in its duty to ensure that only lawful voters make it to the voter roll. He cited several statutes that he said made clear that only citizens could cast a ballot.

Maxwell didn’t specify how the election commission and local clerks should verify citizenship of new registrants, or how the commission should check for noncitizens on the voter rolls. He only called for the parties to figure out a plan, whether that be through matching the DOT’s citizenship data or using “other lawfully available means.” He called for that process to be substantially completed before the next statewide election, which is February.

Currently, applicants for voter registration in Wisconsin and most other states must attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, but they are not required to present proof of citizenship.

The issue of noncitizen voting has been hotly debated in recent years, though no widespread instances have been found. Republicans have used the concern to call for citizenship proof checks of all voters, even as data shows that such measures risk disenfranchising some U.S. citizens.

Republicans praised the decision, with state Rep. Amanda Nedweski calling it a “great win for election integrity.”

Democrats and the respondents in the case were largely mum.

Election commission spokesperson Emilee Miklas didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Riley Vetterkind, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which represents the commission and Department of Transportation, declined to say whether the agencies would appeal the decision.

Who are the parties?

The current plaintiffs, Pewaukee resident Ardis Cerny and Waukesha resident Annette Kuglitsch, sued the election commission, Department of Transportation, and officials in both agencies. They have argued that the election commission is violating their voting rights by not checking for noncitizens already registered to vote and seeking to vote.

Maxwell agreed, saying they “have a clear legal right to not have their votes diluted by a non-citizen casting an unlawful ballot.”

What happens now?

It’s unclear how the commission would verify the citizenship of all of Wisconsin’s registered voters by February. Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, said the decision will “definitely be appealed” and that the lower-court decision could be stayed while the appeal goes through the courts.

If the case reaches the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the liberal majority could overturn the order of the conservative-leaning Waukesha County Circuit Court.

Read more Votebeat coverage about the fight over citizenship proof:

Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly approve ban on noncitizen voting, Nov. 6, 2024
Fight over Wisconsin DMV data flares as GOP pushes noncitizen voting message, Oct. 25, 2024
Noncitizen voting rarely happens. But Wisconsin voters are hearing a lot about it. Oct. 16, 2024

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

How the feud at Vote.org complicates pro-democracy work

2025-09-29T13:54:35+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

A messy, long-running fight involving one of the country’s most prominent voter registration groups got even messier this month when Vote.org sued its founder, Debra Cleaver, who launched the group in 2008.

The two sides had an acrimonious split in 2019 that has since played out as a noxious stew of allegations, in court and in public.

But the particulars of the dispute matter less than the backdrop against which it’s happening. Nonprofits dedicated to registering voters are now carrying out their work at a time of heightened challenges. Alarming claims about the risk of ineligible voters slipping onto the rolls are fueling distrust of registration drives. States have enacted new laws in recent years to restrict or criminalize aspects of this work.

Meanwhile, one of the field’s most visible groups is burning resources and credibility.

Vote.org is a nonpartisan nonprofit that provides online tools to help people register to vote, check their registration status, and access election information; it has become one of the largest digital platforms for election support in the U.S., serving millions of voters each election cycle.

Vote.org has repeatedly insisted that the fight with Cleaver won’t distract it from its work. But it’s the type of thing that can create confusion for donors, hesitation among partners, and fresh doubts about whether nonprofits can rise to the challenges they face.

Recent research from Democracy Fund (a financial supporter of Votebeat) underscores why this is such a sensitive moment for Vote.org to be in turmoil. According to a survey released earlier this year, nearly 9 in 10 democracy funders say they’re worried about a decline in support for such work, and many believe the philanthropic sector has yet to find strategies that can meaningfully improve U.S. democracy. While large institutional funders mostly plan to maintain or even increase their giving, individual donors are far less certain — exactly the audience most likely to be spooked by headlines about internal dysfunction at a group like Vote.org.

The survey also shows funders are increasingly worried about legal risks and reputational threats to pro-democracy nonprofits, with many now offering flexible funding or legal support to grantees facing such pressures. But even well-resourced groups have little margin for messy, publicized internal disputes. That reality makes the current Vote.org lawsuit a stress test of donor confidence in the sector as a whole.

Research also shows that when nonprofits appear less transparent, donor trust erodes — and with it, perceptions of their performance. Once that confidence is shaken, rebuilding it is slow, if not impossible. In academic parlance (and courtesy of Mark LeClair at Fairfield University), “the cumulative effect of scandals in the charitable sector is a significant reduction in the level of giving.”

Vanessa Avery, lead counsel for Vote.org, said Cleaver’s actions, detailed in the suit, have harmed the organization’s ability to raise money and have left it with no choice but to sue to stop her behavior.

“At a time when voting rights are under unprecedented assault, it’s truly unfortunate that Debra Cleaver has continued to pursue a relentless and defamatory campaign to, in her own words, ‘destroy’ Vote.org,” said Avery, a partner at McCartner & English.

Cleaver declined to comment on the allegations and said she is “certain” that any declining enthusiasm among philanthropies has nothing to do with the ongoing feud. While she said she has noticed that “foundations are less inclined to fund voter registration work,” she attributes this “to fear of reprisal from the Trump administration.”

Either way, when funders pull back, the people left exposed are voters who rely on these groups to expand access and defend participation.

Besides playing a vital role in voter registration, groups like Vote.org fill important gaps in voter education — a responsibility that has grown as new regulatory burdens make it harder for local election offices to provide guidance directly to voters.

And while state and local governments struggle to provide user-friendly ways to check voter registration on your phone or request a mailed ballot without the use of a printer, these groups make apps and run campaigns that make voting easier for millions.

The dispute between Vote.org and Cleaver will ultimately be resolved. But meanwhile, it puts the voting public at risk.

Update, Sept. 30: This story was updated to include comment from Vote.org.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

U.S. sues Michigan, Pennsylvania and four other states over request for voter rolls

2025-09-25T20:24:51+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday sued six states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, New York, New Hampshire, and Minnesota — for what it said was a “failure to produce their statewide voter registration lists upon request.”

What’s the dispute?

The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to several states — and said it will eventually contact every state — asking for copies of their voter lists and for detailed information about how they maintain them. The department has said it’s seeking to enforce requirements in federal law that President Donald Trump has ordered it to prioritize.

Some states have declined to turn over their full voter rolls, arguing that to share personally identifiable information would violate various federal and state laws. Several of the states that were sued Thursday, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, have turned over or directed the department to the publicly available versions of their voter rolls, which exclude sensitive personal information.

What is the plaintiff asking for?

The department is requesting personally identifying information that states don’t usually make public, such as partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. So far, many states, including the six the Justice Department sued Thursday, have declined to provide that information, citing privacy concerns and state law.

The lawsuits, filed in federal court in each of the six states, ask federal judges to force states to provide the voter rolls, including full names, addresses, and either driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of the voters’ Social Security numbers. The lawsuits assert that states are required to provide the information so the Justice Department can assess compliance with federal laws, specifically the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

In addition to the six states that were sued Thursday, the department last week sued Maine and Oregon.

What happens now?

Pennsylvania will “vigorously fight the federal government’s overreach in court,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, said in a statement, calling the department’s request for personal information “unprecedented and unlawful.”

“As Secretary of the Commonwealth, I have an obligation to protect the personal information that Pennsylvania voters entrust us with, and I take that obligation extremely seriously,” he said.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in a statement to Votebeat, said the Justice Department “is trying to get us to turn over the private, personal information of more than 8 million state residents.”

State and federal law both implement strict privacy protections, she said, adding that the federal government has not clearly said how it intends to use the data.

Benson, a Democrat, called the Department’s request an “illegal and unconstitutional power grab.”

In a statement, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said his office had told the Justice Department it could not provide private voter data without “information about how the information will be used and secured.” Instead of providing that, Simon said, the Justice Department sued.

New York state and New Hampshire officials said they’re reviewing the lawsuits and declined to comment. California officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuits.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain state voter rolls:

A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’, Sept. 4, 2025
After delays, Michigan shares limited voter rolls with U.S. Justice Department, Sept. 3, 2025
Pennsylvania rebuffs U.S. request for voter rolls containing personal data, Aug 21, 2025
Michigan says Justice Department silence is stalling effort to turn over voter records, Aug. 26, 2025
Justice Department widens its request for Pennsylvania election information, Aug. 8, 2025
Justice Department presses Texas for list of registered voters, and the officials who check it, Aug. 14, 2025

Update, Sept. 25: This story was updated to include comment from Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and New York state officials.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org. Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat based in Pennsylvania. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Texas counties struggle to process voter registrations using state’s new TEAM system

2025-09-25T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Darcy Hood mailed her voter registration application to the Tarrant County elections department in July, after she turned 18.

Months later, her application still hasn’t been processed. And it’s unclear when it will be.

With the Oct. 6 deadline to register to vote in the November constitutional amendment election approaching, tens of thousands of Texans are in the same situation, waiting in suspense for their applications to go through, a process that normally takes a few days or weeks.

In interviews, private conversations, and emails, county elections officials from across the state point the finger at the state’s voter registration system, known as TEAM, which has long had functionality problems. They say that after the software was overhauled in July, the problems began proliferating: Voters’ previous addresses override their new ones, their voting precincts don’t populate correctly, and sometimes the registration information doesn’t save at all.

“One day it works and we can get stuff done, and the next day it doesn’t and nothing gets done,” said Pam Hill, the elections administrator in San Patricio County. “That’s the trend right now.”

The executive board of the Texas Association of County Election Officials met on Sept. 2 with Christina Adkins, the state’s elections division director, and Deputy Director Kristi Hart to discuss the problems. In an email sent afterward to association members and obtained by Votebeat, the board said it “unambiguously stated the level of frustration from our members” regarding the need for clear guidance and training, the absence of which “has placed unexpected burdens and stress on our members.” The board said it would begin offering some training and peer support itself.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it anticipated some technical issues with this “once-in-a-decade upgrade.” Adkins told election officials this month that many of the problems stem from county officials not knowing how to use the updated system.

But several county election officials said the system didn’t work well during training sessions earlier this year, which limited opportunities for hands-on testing.

Meanwhile, the unprocessed registration applications keep piling up. Hood’s application is one of around 13,000 that Tarrant County election officials say are pending state verification. Travis County says it has more than 12,000 applications that need to be processed, and Bexar County has more than 40,000. A Texas voter whose application was received on time but not processed by the time of the election can still cast a provisional ballot, but there’s a risk those ballots won’t be counted.

“I hate that our voters are going through this, and it’s through no fault of their own,” said Clinton Ludwig, the Tarrant County elections administrator. The voters are doing what they’re supposed to do, and we’re also trying to do what we’re supposed to do.”

Heather Hood, Darcy’s mother, told Votebeat that for weeks she has called Tarrant County and state officials seeking answers about her daughter’s application. An official with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told her last week “to be patient.”

“It’s so frustrating to be placated, and they’re telling me to be patient when they are the ones who have put this system into place and it is not working correctly,” Heather Hood told Votebeat in a phone interview.

State officials say they’re responding to concerns

State officials have pushed back on some of the counties’ complaints. “There is a difference between a county saying this doesn’t work and a county saying, I don’t know how to do this,” Adkins, the state election director, said in a Sept. 17 video call with local election officials that was recorded by the state and shared with Votebeat. “We want to really make sure that we’re drilling down on the things that are issues versus areas where you need more training.”

In statements to Votebeat, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office said that the rollout of the updated version of TEAM is a multi-stage process, and that the office has “planned accordingly.”

The task involves “migrating more than 20 million records and training more than 2,500 users,” the office said. “Technical issues are to be expected with a rollout of this size, and that is why we chose this constitutional election cycle for this transition.”

“We are working long hours to help our counties prepare for the November election and upgrade to a new version of TEAM that will ultimately result in more efficiently managed elections,” the office said.

The state and the vendor that developed the system “continue to respond to issues and concerns,” the office said.

The Secretary of State’s Office has assigned 30 employees to work directly with counties to train them and answer technical questions about the new system, the agency said, three times as many as it had in the previous TEAM update.

“As we are in the middle of a once-in-a-decade upgrade of the state’s voter registration system, our focus right now is on supporting counties in preparation for the upcoming election,” the agency added. “Any verdict on the new system is far too premature at the moment.”

Counties have long had issues with TEAM

TEAM — the Texas Election Administration Management system — has been around since the early 2000s, and earlier iterations prompted many complaints from election officials. The state improved the system over the years and launched a complete overhaul in July, but election officials say it is falling short of the promises that officials from the Texas Secretary of State’s Office made to election officials and state lawmakers.

The system was developed by Louisiana-based vendor Civix. All but 15 of the state’s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that use software from one of two state-approved private vendors to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and have to use TEAM to verify a voter’s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.

Election officials across the state have been complaining for months about struggles with the latest TEAM iteration, and at least 10 county election officials interviewed by Votebeat said the issues are preventing them from completing essential tasks.

“Some of (the problems) get corrected, and then a few days later, they’re not working again,” said Hill, the San Patricio County elections administrator.

She said her staff in the South Texas county, which has roughly 40,000 registered voters, hasn’t been able to process about 600 voter registration applications initially submitted through the Texas Department of Public Safety. To do so, her staff must use the system to make sure the voters are not already registered somewhere else, plus double-check street addresses to ensure the voter gets the correct ballot, among other tasks.

The Texas Association of County Election Officials surveyed its members Sept. 2 and found that county officials struggled with the system, but noted that TEAM representatives were helpful and responsive. Around 114 of the association’s 600-plus members responded to the survey.

“A substantial portion of users find the TEAM system’s core functionalities, particularly Voter Registration and related sub-features, to be difficult or not functioning,” says the survey summary, which Votebeat obtained through an open records request.

Chris McGinn, the association’s executive director, declined to comment on how the state has responded to complaints about the system. But he said the association is continuing to work with the Secretary of State’s Office and that the agency “has been very willing to listen to our concerns and address them as efficiently as they can.”

At least two dozen messages from 15 county officials regarding concerns about TEAM were sent to an email list of county election officials between July and September, according to records obtained by Votebeat, though some of those officials say their issues were subsequently fixed.

“Would it help if everyone just logged off until they fix everything? Thoughts?” Harrison County elections administrator Donald Robinette wrote earlier this month.

Civix, the vendor that developed TEAM, declined to comment for this story. According to public records, its contract with the state is for $17 million. The Secretary of State’s Office said it’s paid by a mix of state funds and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, aimed at improving election administration.

Migrating to TEAM from private systems

While the state uses TEAM and counties must sync with it, the local offices can use a state-approved private vendor to maintain voter registration and conduct other vital tasks. But such contracts can be costly, creating an incentive for counties to use TEAM, which is free for them. Some counties switched to TEAM in the last year after becoming concerned about the viability of Votec, one of the two state-sanctioned vendors.

“Our team is systematically addressing any issues as they arise in support of the 254 counties who are adjusting to the new system,” the Texas Secretary of State’s Office’s statement said. “At the same time, we are attempting to onboard counties whose privately contracted vendor just went out of business, leaving them without a functioning voter registration system. This is an unprecedented situation.”

The struggles county election officials are having with TEAM have deterred others from making the switch away from outside vendors.

Nueces County used Votec for voter registration until August and considered switching to TEAM. But after hearing from his counterparts around the state, Kevin Kieschnick, the county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said the county decided instead to contract with the other state-approved vendor, VR Systems.

Kieschnick said he concluded that the county wouldn’t be able to transfer large files of voter registration applications, voters’ signatures, and geographical data of voters’ addresses. “There were enough issues that I heard about from a bunch of other counties that made me think, ‘Nope, we’re not going to do that,’” he said.

The state’s contract with Civix requires the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to address any poor performance, and by law, it must report information about the vendor’s performance to a state tracking system. The office did not respond directly to questions about whether it has reported any problems yet, but said it’s working closely with Civix to resolve them.

Hill, the elections administrator from San Patricio County in South Texas, said she believes the state will fix the problems, but she expects it’ll take time.

“Six months from now, I might tell you that TEAM is working great and we really like the new TEAM,” Hill said. “I hope we get there.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Battle over Arizona’s election manual expands to citizenship checks, early voting, hand counts

2025-09-15T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

The release of new draft rules dictating how Arizona’s elections must be run has reopened partisan battles over such issues as how officials handle voter citizenship checks, conduct early voting, and count ballots.

Republican lawmakers are threatening to again sue Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, if he doesn’t change these rules and others he included in his draft of Arizona’s Elections Procedures Manual, the document that explains how officials must implement state law.

House Speaker Steve Montenegro wrote in a news release that the draft manual weakens safeguards against noncitizen voting and undermines legislative authority. “Such abuses erode trust in our elections and will not stand,” he wrote.

It’s been years since new election rules have been fully implemented, because of political disagreements and court battles, and comments from Montenegro and other legislative leaders indicate the court fights won’t end soon. Under state law, the secretary of state must update the manual every two years. But in 2021, state lawmakers did not come to the required consensus on new rules, and in 2023, court battles put the entire manual up in the air.

While Fontes’ latest draft removed some of the contested language that was in his last manual, Republicans are now arguing against other provisions — most of which were also in the 2023 manual.

In response to the new Republican complaints, Fontes spokesman Aaron Thacker said the Secretary of State’s office will consider all comments as Fontes finalizes the rulebook to send to the governor and state attorney general for final approval by the end of the year.

“As for the statements about legal action, we believe it’s premature to speculate on the final content of the EPM,” Thacker said. “The process is still very much underway. Let’s allow that process to unfold before jumping to conclusions or engaging in political theater.”

Rules on confirming voter citizenship

One Republican complaint involves what Fontes’ draft says should happen when an election official finds information in databases showing that someone who is attempting to register to vote is not a U.S. citizen, and is therefore ineligible. Montenegro and Senate President Warren Petersen raised that issue in a letter to Fontes.

The lawmakers say that in such cases, under state law, the voter’s application must be rejected. But Fontes wrote in his manual that, when the applicant uses a federal form to apply, the voter’s application should rather be placed on hold. If the voter can prove their citizenship by 7 p.m. on Election Day, they would be permitted to vote, he wrote.

The disagreement may have something to do with the ongoing court battle over that state law. A federal judge last year blocked some provisions of it, and that ruling is now on appeal. But it’s unclear if this particular provision on confirming citizenship is among those blocked.

GOP legislative leaders also say Fontes’ draft gives officials incorrect instructions on what to do if a new voter registration is submitted on a state application form without proof of citizenship. They say state law requires officials to reject the application, but Fontes’ draft directs the officials to try to find documents proving citizenship in the state’s motor vehicle database on the voter’s behalf before rejecting the application.

State Rep. Alex Kolodin, who also sent a letter to Fontes listing provisions that he thought violated state law, included rules on confirming voter citizenship on that list.

Montenegro and Petersen also say that Fontes has incorrectly written that early ballots cannot be challenged on the grounds that the voter didn’t provide proof of citizenship.

These voter citizenship rules that the lawmakers are questioning were all in the 2023 manual, but were not included in Republican lawsuits challenging that manual.

Restrictions on voter intimidation

Kolodin, who is running against Fontes for secretary of state in 2026, also said he believes Fontes didn’t do enough to correct a section on what constitutes voter intimidation. A federal judge blocked Fontes’ 2023 rules on that, but Fontes appealed that decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court recently held a hearing on the case, and the matter is pending.

The 2023 manual prohibited actions that might be threatening, harassing, or intimidating, both inside and outside the 75-foot radius around a polling site where electioneering is prohibited.

The new manual cites federal and state laws that prohibit voter intimidation, but is less broad. And while the 2023 manual gave an example of using “threatening, insulting or offensive language to a voter or poll worker,” the new manual deletes the words “insulting” and “offensive.”

But in a footnote, Fontes gave more examples, such as “intentionally following individuals delivering ballots to the drop box when such individuals are not within 75 feet of a drop box,” and “speaking to or yelling at an individual, without provocation, who that person knows is returning ballots to the drop box and who is within 75 feet of the drop box.”

Kolodin says that this section still includes vague language that could chill free speech at polling places and drop boxes. It lists actions such as speaking to voters or monitoring ballot deliveries as potential violations.

Asked last month about his revisions to that section, Fontes said that his office was “trying to walk the line between some of the crazy rulings that we’ve seen coming out of the court that seem to protect the First Amendment rights of people who would scream at voters in line, and those First Amendment rights of voters to peaceably assemble.”

Rules on early in-person voting and ballot counting

Kolodin’s letter also points to two other areas where he believes Fontes’ instructions incorrectly interpret provisions of state law — provisions that haven’t yet been tested in court.

The first issue is a line in the manual that says officials “shall establish in-person early voting locations throughout the county as practicable to ensure that all voters may reasonably access at least one early voting location.”

While the word “shall” in that sentence makes it mandatory for recorders, state law phrases it differently: It says that officials “may establish on-site early voting locations at the office of the county recorder or at other locations in the county deemed necessary or appropriate by the recorder.”

The second issue is whether counties must use tabulation machines for the initial counting of ballots. Some election lawyers in the state consider the state law on this unclear.

Fontes has taken the position that the law requires counties to use the machines, and that they cannot hand-count ballots at all unless it’s during the post-election hand-count audit required by statute.

In a footnote, he points to a few lines in state law on this, such as one that states that ballots can be hand-counted only if it “becomes impracticable to count all or a part of the ballots with tabulating equipment.”

Kolodin, though, points to another line in state law that uses the “may” phrasing rather than “shall”: It states that ballots “may be cast, recorded and counted by voting or marking devices and vote tabulating devices.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Some of America’s newest citizens may face an extra barrier to the ballot box

2025-09-15T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

In Milwaukee this week, dozens of new Americans filed into the federal courthouse to take the oath of citizenship. The scene was joyful, emotional, and for many, the culmination of years of waiting. Outside the ceremony, volunteers from the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County stood ready with electronic tablets to register interested voters.

By the end of the second of three ceremonies that day, more than 20 people had already registered to vote — each one of them a fully documented citizen of the United States.

Linda Neubauer, who leads those efforts, has watched this scene before. “Some of them were never allowed to vote in their own home countries, so it’s a very big deal for them,” she told Alex Shur, our Wisconsin reporter. “It makes it very special for us. I get my share of hugs from new citizens.”

This is the work that League volunteers have been doing for decades: welcoming brand-new Americans into democracy by making sure they don’t leave their ceremony without the tools to vote. And here’s the important part — that hasn’t stopped.

So why do we bring this up? At the end of August, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that from now on, only state and local election officials can register new citizens at ceremonies held in USCIS facilities. Nonpartisan volunteers, such as those from the League are out. The agency says it’s worried about the “sporadic” nature of volunteer participation and whether it can guarantee nonpartisanship. Critics say this is a solution in search of a problem — and one that could make it harder for new citizens to register.

But here’s the thing: Many naturalization ceremonies don’t happen at USCIS facilities. They happen in courthouses and are overseen by judges. That’s why the joyful scene in Milwaukee played out as usual. The new guidance simply doesn’t apply there.

It also doesn’t change much in many other places. In Arizona, for example, League members already work as deputy registrars through county election departments, so they’re operating under official authority. In Texas, the same is true, and most ceremonies are judge-led, so little changes there either.

“We’ve instructed our Leagues to continue conducting naturalization ceremonies as they always have, until an official directive changes this practice,” said Joyce LeBombard, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas.

What the new directive really does is complicate voter registration at the set of ceremonies that are directly managed by USCIS — ceremonies that often don’t have state or local election officials on hand. USCIS says voter registration applications and information “will continue to be provided by state or local election officials, or USCIS staff at the end of naturalization ceremonies.” Still, it means those new citizens won’t necessarily have the same warm experience as the ones in Wisconsin.

“By shutting out the League and other civic partners, USCIS is making it harder for new citizens to register to vote, which is yet another intimidation tactic and attack on the immigrant community,” Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, said in a statement. “Our democracy is stronger with the voices of new citizens.”

And that’s where the politics come in. The Trump administration has been loudly and rapidly changing immigration policies since January, each time making it a little harder for new citizens and immigrants working toward citizenship. Cutting back voter registration at naturalization ceremonies sends the message that full participation in civic life isn’t meant to be easy or welcoming.

An email from USCIS to Colorado officials, released to Votebeat by the Colorado secretary of state’s office, shows, in part, how this is playing out. In it, USCIS asked officials from the state and from Jefferson County, outside of Denver, for voter registration information to distribute to new citizens, and invited local government representatives to attend naturalization ceremonies to help register voters.

But the email said USCIS staff are “not permitted to work with the City of Denver currently due to Denver’s sanctuary city status.” USCIS has not responded to questions about this policy.

In places like Wisconsin, meanwhile, the USCIS policy makes headlines, but it doesn’t make much difference. The courthouse is still full of hugs, clipboards, and first-time voters ready to make their voices heard.

Votebeat reporters Alex Shur, Jen Fifield, and Natalia Contreras contributed reporting.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

ERIC data-sharing alliance helps uncover alleged double voting case in Pennsylvania

2025-09-09T17:14:33+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Officials uncovered a five-year-old case of double voting in Pennsylvania with the help of a voter roll maintenance program that has been the target of conservative attacks in recent years.

The case involved a man named Matthew Laiss, who moved from Pennsylvania to Florida in August 2020, and allegedly voted both in person in Florida and via mail ballot in Bucks County in that year’s November election, prosecutors said.

David Metcalf, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, announced charges against Laiss last week. Pennsylvania’s Department of State confirmed the alleged double vote was identified using data from the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. Metcalf also announced another set of fraud charges last week, in a case that was not discovered via ERIC.

The announcement that ERIC helped prosecutors uncover alleged double voting comes amid broader questions about the merits of the program. ERIC is a consortium comprising 26 states and the District of Columbia that collects state voter roll data and alerts its members to potentially inaccurate or duplicate voter registration records. It compares state datasets such as driver’s license databases, death records and voter rolls, along with other sources of information, to find cross-state or intra-state matches.

ERIC also helps identify eligible voters who aren’t yet registered. Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary of state, Jonathan Marks, chairs ERIC’s board.

One of its regular functions, Executive Director Shane Hamlin said, is a biennial report identifying possible double voting, the most recent of which came out in March of this year.

“While voter fraud is rare, this is a great example of why ERIC is a great tool,” Hamlin said, adding that the data it provides helps states investigate fraud and hand credible cases over to law enforcement.

Florida was a member of ERIC in 2020, making it possible for the system to compare that state’s voter roll data against Pennsylvania’s and discover the type of fraud allegedly committed by Laiss.

But Florida left ERIC in 2023, as did several other Republican-led states in recent years, following attacks from conservative activists and media outlets that accused it of focusing on working to register left-leaning voters rather than prioritizing cleaning voter rolls.

In the other case announced last week, prosecutors charged Miya Pack of Philadelphia with double voting in the 2024 election, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. New Jersey only recently joined ERIC, and it hadn’t yet provided data for the program’s most recent analysis.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’

2025-09-04T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up to have Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

The federal government’s demands that states turn over their voter rolls and related information highlights longstanding conflicts over how to ensure that only eligible voters are registered without endangering voting rights.

The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to several states — and plans to send many more — asking them for copies of their voter lists and for detailed information about how they maintain them. The department has said it’s seeking to enforce requirements in federal law that President Donald Trump has ordered it to prioritize.

It has already sued North Carolina, alleging that the state has not been properly verifying voter identity, and sued Orange County, California, for refusing to provide full records for 17 people who have been removed from the rolls in connection with a probe of potential noncitizen voting. And it has threatened to sue or withhold federal funding from other states if they do not comply with their requests for information.

Everyone agrees that a “clean” voter list — cleared of people who have died or moved out of the jurisdiction, or who otherwise aren’t eligible to vote — is good practice. But they differ on how aggressively election officials should move to remove potentially ineligible voters, what exactly federal law requires election officials to do, and how to balance election security with the risk of wrongly removing and disenfranchising eligible voters.

Rhetoric and false claims can make the debate harder to follow. Here’s a guide to understanding the issues and arguments.

What does the law require?

There are two key federal laws that govern the maintenance of voter rolls.

The National Voter Registration Act requires election officials to make a “reasonable effort” to remove voters who become ineligible to vote because they move or die, a process known as list maintenance. The Help America Vote Act, enacted about a decade later, requires states to use a computerized statewide list of every registered voter and assign them a unique identification number. It also requires them to remove duplicated names.

Beyond that, it’s up to state and local governments to set their own policies for how and when to perform list maintenance, and it’s up to federal courts to decide what is “reasonable.” That term isn’t defined in the law, and it’s often where voting rights groups and advocates for stricter list maintenance disagree.

In a recent case in Michigan, for example, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state’s actions to remove the names of thousands of dead voters from the rolls were sufficient, even though the plaintiff, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, claimed to have identified thousands more on the rolls.

Logan Churchwell, research director at the foundation said in an interview that the court’s decision amounted to giving Michigan an “E for effort.” He said his organization believes there should be a higher standard that would reduce the risk of fraud and administrative error.

For her part, Lata Nott, director of voting rights policy for Campaign Legal Center, said the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement for a “reasonable effort” at maintaining lists is designed to set a floor, but it doesn’t prevent states from creating extreme policies that lead to eligible voters being mistakenly removed.

What is the central issue in the debate?

The main disagreement is over how aggressive list maintenance should be. A recent congressional hearing highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicans on this question.

House Republicans claimed dirty voter rolls enable fraud, and said ensuring that only eligible voters are on the list increases election security and voter confidence. They dismissed the idea that their efforts are meant to purge certain types of eligible voters from the rolls, such as people of color.

“This is not and should never be a partisan issue,” said Rep. Laurel Lee, a Florida Republican and former secretary of state. “Maintaining accurate voter rolls is fundamental to election security and public trust.”

House Democrats made it clear that they, too, don’t want ineligible voters, such as dead people or noncitizens, on the list. But they questioned why Republicans would want to take any actions that could potentially disenfranchise eligible people, citing recent incidents of state list maintenance actions that led to eligible voters being removed.

“What we do want is every eligible voter gets the chance to vote and their constitutional rights are not infringed upon,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, a Texas Democrat. “And that seems to be a huge distinction.”

Why is it hard to keep voter rolls updated?

It is difficult partly because of the decentralized nature of voting.

The U.S. doesn’t have a national database of eligible voters or citizens. Under federal law, states maintain their own lists. They assign voters the ID number that’s required under the Help America Vote Act, but that number doesn’t have to be connected to any existing federal identification, such as a Social Security number.

To remove voters who were eligible, but aren’t anymore, election officials must have ways to find out when a voter dies, moves to another state, is convicted of a felony, or otherwise becomes ineligible to cast a ballot.

Many election officials get data on address changes from their state’s motor-vehicle department and the U.S. Postal Service, and get death reports from state and federal agencies. Some states allow or mandate the use of other sources, such as obituaries and responses to jury duty summonses.

But there are po1tential gaps and time lags in these systems. When people move, for example, they don’t often tell the election office for their old address to remove them from the rolls.

It’s fairly easy for officials to track in-state moves, because people carry the same state-assigned voter ID number when they go to register in a new location in the state. But it’s harder for officials to find out when someone moves out of state. That requires coordination between states, or more detailed searches through government records.

Many states are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a consortium that collects state voter roll data and alerts its members to potentially duplicate registrations across state lines. But two of the largest states, California and New York, are not members. And several Republican states have withdrawn from ERIC in recent years, citing concerns about the program, including about how the organization shares some of its data with researchers.

Do some states have more registered voters than residents?

Statistics like this are often used to back up claims of voter fraud or poor state practices. But there’s a legitimate explanation for this that’s tied to federal and state laws.

In some instances, state laws allow election officials to remove voters from the rolls quickly, such as when they die, or if they respond to a jury duty summons by saying they are not a U.S. citizen.

But when a state finds out a voter may have moved, federal law requires election officials to send a confirmation mailing before removing that person from the rolls. If the voter doesn’t respond, they remain on the roll of registered voters, but are moved to the “inactive” list, and their names must stay there for two federal election cycles before they are removed, unless the state hears from them.

That four-year wait, and a large number of voters on the inactive list, can make the voter roll appear bloated at any given time.

But another reason for the disparity is that population estimates themselves are imprecise, said Chris Fowler, a professor of geography and demography at Penn State University who studies voter rolls and census data.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey is currently our best measure of population changes from year to year, Fowler said. But the uncertainty in the national population count is about 10 million residents, he said — roughly equal to the population of Michigan.

Some use the disparities between the numbers to cast doubt on the accuracy of elections and raise alarm about voter fraud, such as Elon Musk with his misleading claim that Michigan had “more registered voters than eligible citizens.” His numbers included inactive voters as if they were eligible voters. But before those voters could cast a ballot, they would have to correct their voting record to prove eligibility, most commonly by showing documentation proving they still live in the jurisdiction.

How ‘dirty’ are the voter rolls?

Some of the most cited data available on this comes from more than a decade ago, and has helped inspire efforts at improvement since then. But those efforts have run into challenges.

In 2012, a research study by the Pew Center on the States found that more than 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state, and there were more than 1.8 million dead people whose names were still on the voter rolls. These and other findings “underscore the need for states to improve accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency,” Pew said.

There have been multiple attempts to create systems allowing states to share data to help with voter list maintenance. That’s a difficult task, because any such effort must comply with state and federal laws governing data use and privacy. Officials must also cross-check data from various sources, using enough different data points to ensure that the matches are accurate, and that a person with the same name as another isn’t mistakenly removed as a duplicate.

One prior program, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, was ultimately shut down under a court settlement because it did not do enough to protect sensitive voter data. It was also found to be highly inaccurate, often incorrectly identifying registrations as duplicates because of poor matching techniques.

After Pew’s study, the nonprofit provided funding to help launch ERIC, to try to screen out duplicate voter registrations across state lines. Since then, ERIC has helped states identify hundreds of thousands of voters each year who have moved across state lines, and tens of thousands of voters who died. But in part because some Republican states have left the program, only half of states now participate, leaving a lot of gaps.

Some states use more data sources and perform checks more frequently than others. In the latest federal survey of election officials, for example, about 30% of states said they do not use National Change of Address reports from the U.S. Postal Service or data from motor vehicle agencies to identify potentially ineligible voters.

Do poorly maintained voter rolls allow for more fraud?

Generally speaking, removing a voter who has moved prevents them from wrongly voting in their old voting jurisdiction, and removing a voter who has died prevents another person from fraudulently casting a ballot in their name.

That said, prosecutions for double voting and voting for others are rare, and Votebeat could not find any studies showing that states that do a better job of cleaning voter rolls have less voter fraud.

The Heritage Foundation’s database of voter fraud across all states since 1982 includes 174 convictions for duplicate voting, 99 cases of noncitizen voting, and two cases of someone voting under a dead person’s name.

But Churchwell, of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said the number of prosecutions does not properly measure how much fraud occurs. Rather, he said, it indicates the state’s propensity to prosecute. “I doubt you’ll find research showing where a state is simultaneously terrible at list maintenance yet zealous with prosecutions,” he said.

Are there noncitizens on the voter rolls?

Yes, but states that have looked have not found them in large numbers.

Audits in multiple states have found small numbers of noncitizens on the rolls, few of whom had actually cast ballots, and there are no known instances of noncitizens voting in large enough numbers to influence the outcome of an election.

The threat of noncitizen voting has become a prominent talking point for Republicans, driving their efforts to pass proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters. But even in Republican-led states, officials who have recently tried to find noncitizens on the rolls have reported only small numbers.

In an audit last year, for example, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office found 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters. Nine of them had voted in prior elections, the office found. In Ohio, only one of the 641 cases of noncitizen voting that Secretary of State Frank LaRose referred for prosecution resulted in a voter fraud charge.

In Texas, which has more than 18.6 million registered voters, the Secretary of State’s Office identified 581 noncitizens from 2021 to August of 2024. The state referred 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the 2024 election to the attorney general for investigation. The state also is investigating potential cases from the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.

In Michigan, where activists are working to get a proof-of-citizenship requirement enacted, a review this year by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office found 15 noncitizens who voted in the November 2024 election.

In Arizona, which requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, Jesse Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University, identified at least 2,331 registered voters who he believes are highly likely to be noncitizens. He studied the state’s voter rolls as an expert defense witness for a case challenging the state’s proof of citizenship laws. Richman said those people could have become naturalized citizens since last updating their license, but the ID they used when registering to vote or updating their registration was a noncitizen ID.

On Aug. 28, the U.S. Justice Department announced the indictment of a Canadian citizen charged with registering to vote and voting in federal elections in North Carolina in 2022 and 2024.

Are there dead people on the voter rolls?

Yes, there are voters who have died but whose names are still on the rolls.

But claims about the number of such voters often turn out to be inaccurate.

In 2012, for example, South Carolina’s State Election Commission reviewed 207 cases that the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles had referred to as potential cases of ballots being cast in the names of dead voters. Of those, the commission was able to conclude that 197 did not involve dead voters — instead, they were either clerical errors, or identified through bad matches. There wasn’t enough information on the remaining 10 cases to make any determination.

States that are members of ERIC receive reports about voters who may have died while out of state, and the service has identified about 644,000 voters who died over the last 13 years and whose names needed to be removed from the list. But some state laws may limit how states use that information.

Pennsylvania, for example, is an ERIC member, but state law allows officials to remove the names of dead voters only if they learn of it through the state’s health agency or an obituary. Election officials in the state, including Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, have advocated for that to change.

Can list maintenance measures lead to eligible voters being purged?

Yes. In Texas, some of the people removed from the rolls last year were eligible citizens who did not respond to a mailed notice seeking more information about their status, an investigation by Votebeat, The Texas Tribune, and ProPublica found.

And that’s the concern that voting rights advocates have about states that take aggressive steps to clean their lists, especially close to an election. Two of the most recent cases were in Alabama and Virginia, just before the November 2024 election.

Alabama inactivated the registrations of 2,074 eligible voters whom it had flagged as noncitizens based on whether they had been issued federal immigration ID numbers. And Virginia also removed eligible voters from its rolls as it attempted to purge noncitizens based on information from its motor vehicle department, CNN and NPR found.

This is why federal law has safeguards on when states can remove potentially ineligible voters, such as the rule that election officials cannot conduct systematic voter removals within 90 days of an election, Nott with Campaign Legal Center said.

“The more aggressive your list maintenance laws are,” she said, “the more likely you are probably going to be purging people who are eligible to vote.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Texas lawmakers pass election bill to retain limits on same-day registration changes

2025-09-03T19:21:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Update, Sep. 3: Lawmakers in the Texas House and Senate approved a bill to enact a proposal sought by Gov. Greg Abbott, and it’s now headed to his desk. Under the bill, which revokes a change that was scheduled to take effect Sept. 1, voters can update their address at the polls, but have to wait 30 days for that change to take effect. Meanwhile, they can vote a ballot with races tied to their old address.

Updated, Aug. 27: This story was updated to include new information from Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called on lawmakers Monday to prohibit same-day voter registration, in an apparent attempt to reverse a measure passed earlier this year that relaxed rules for voters who made last-minute updates to their addresses.

Texas does not allow same-day registration for new applicants (23 other states do), but under the legislation passed this year with bipartisan support, Senate Bill 2217, voters could update their addresses and immediately cast a ballot based on their new precinct or district, as long as the move was within the county. That law was scheduled to go into effect Sept. 1.

Shortly after Abbott’s announcement, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from East Texas, announced on social media that he had filed a bill that would effectively prevent that measure from going into effect.

Abbott clarified late Tuesday in a message to lawmakers that he was seeking legislation about “accepting a voter with an address that is not current” and about a voter’s registration taking “immediate effect” after election officials receive a change-of-address notice.

Cain’s bill would maintain the status quo, in which voters can update their address at the polls, but have to wait 30 days for that change to take effect. Their ballot would include races tied to their old address, the one on file in the state voter registration system before the update.

Abbott’s office didn’t immediately respond to questions about why he added the issue to the agenda for the ongoing special legislative session.

Senate Bill 2217, which aimed to make election data reporting and reconciliation consistent across the state, was written by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican from East Texas, and enacted during this year’s regular legislative session.

But the provision allowing voters to cast ballots immediately based on same-day address changes was added through an amendment proposed by Republican state Rep. Matt Shaheen of North Texas, who chairs the House Committee on Elections. It passed the full House with bipartisan support.

Earlier this month, during an election law training for election officials hosted by the Texas secretary of state, some election administrators said they were worried about the new requirement.

Trudy Hancock, head of the elections department in Brazos County, home to Texas A&M University, said students move constantly, and her workers handle change-of-address and statement-of-residency forms at every election. Given the volume of changes, she said, processing them immediately would require her staff to work longer hours each day the polls are open. That’s because the voter’s record has to be updated right away before the information can be uploaded to the state’s registration database, as the new law requires.

“We have to come up with some kind of process to go to each early voting location, pick up those statements-of-residence forms, get them back to the office, process them all before we can upload the history — all before 10 o’clock the next morning,” Hancock said.

And since the voter’s address would be changed by election workers at the polling location, without additional address and mapping verification steps that election officials typically take, Hancock said there’s a risk that voters could get the wrong ballot.

“Our election workers are experienced, but they can make mistakes,” she said. “Not all of them are familiar with every single area of the county.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania rebuffs U.S. request for voter rolls containing personal data

2025-08-21T22:47:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Pennsylvania told the U.S. Justice Department that it will not give federal officials a version of the state’s voter rolls that contains personal information, rebuffing a request from the agency.

“This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government’s role in our country’s electoral process,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in a letter Thursday responding to the request.

Schmidt, a Republican, said that his department could provide a public version of the voter rolls, known as the Full Voter Export, which contains information such as name, age, address, and vote history, but that it was prohibited by law from providing voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

Earlier this month, the department asked Pennsylvania for a copy of its voter rolls, as well as for information on answers it provided to a national election survey. Last week, the Justice Department sent a follow-up letter to clarify that it was seeking the version of the rolls containing personally identifiable information.

Such letters have gone out to states around the country, and officials have specified recently that the requests include voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

It is unclear how far the Justice Department may be willing to press the issue. It recently sued Orange County, California, in part for redacting driver’s license and Social Security numbers when responding to a department request for voter registration information.

Some local groups have criticized the requests. In a statement Tuesday, Lauren Cristella, president of the Philadelphia-based government watchdog group Committee of Seventy, said that the recent requests from the Justice Department, along with recent statements from President Donald Trump on mail voting clearly seem to be “an attempt to sow doubt in our elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.”

The original letter from federal officials also sought information about answers Pennsylvania gave to the Election Administration and Voting Survey, among other things.

On Monday the Department of State responded to those portions of the letter, in some cases saying the questions appeared to be based on misunderstandings or mistakes about the data.

Read Votebeat and Spotlight PA’s previous coverage on the state’s communication with the Justice Department:

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Justice Department presses Texas for list of registered voters, and the officials who check it

2025-08-14T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas’ top election official has received a U.S. Justice Department request for access to the state’s list of registered voters, another in a series of letters going out to states demanding information about voter rolls and election procedures.

Along with the voter roll, the department’s Aug. 7 letter to Texas asks for information on how the state is complying with federal requirements for voter list maintenance. It specifically requests information on canceled voter records, records of noncitizens removed from the rolls, voter history, and a list of state and local election officials responsible for voter list maintenance since November 2022. The department gave the state 14 days to respond.

Christina Adkins, director of the election division at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat that the state was notified in July that such a request was coming.

Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has been pushing states to turn over voter registration information on the grounds that it’s needed to support enforcement of election law. It has sent similar requests to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Maine, and others.

The information requests are expected ultimately to go to all 50 states. Some experts and state officials have raised concerns over the legality of the effort and whether it could compromise voter privacy protections. Maine state officials declined to turn over the data.

Adkins told a group of Texas election officials during a training session in Round Rock on Tuesday that her agency has been in contact with the Justice Department. She said Texas has informed the department that it can’t yet provide the voter roll, because it’s shifting to an upgraded version of its voter registration management system, known as Texas Election Administration Management, or TEAM.

Most Texas counties use TEAM to manage their voter rolls and have been testing and training on the upgraded system.

“At some point, the state will have to provide that information to the DOJ. But I’m not doing it yet,” Adkins told election officials. “I don’t believe that we have what they’re asking for with respect to this list, because we are in this transition period,” with some registrations still waiting to be processed and work on list maintenance still pending.

Adkins told election officials Tuesday that the state would handle the request from the Justice Department the same way it would a public-records request, as several other states have.

But Justin Levitt — a professor at Loyola Law School and former DOJ official — said the federal government faces a stricter standard in accessing state records than members of the public.

While federal law allows the public to request certain election records, he said, that does not extend to personally identifiable information, which courts have afforded added protection. Sensitive data, such as information about domestic violence survivors or public officials, is also protected under state law, and courts have repeatedly affirmed these limits.

Levitt said several states misinterpret DOJ requests as standard public-records inquiries, but in reality, “what the DOJ can get, in this circumstance, is less” because of restrictions under the Privacy Act of 1974.

That law, he explained, requires the federal government to justify why it is collecting personal data, and explain how it will be stored, and who will have access — with additional safeguards if the data could be matched to other systems in ways that affect federal benefits. If a state believes the data will be used that way, it cannot legally provide it to federal authorities. The Privacy Act also prohibits states from distributing certain data to the federal government unless strict notice and procedural requirements are met, with criminal penalties for violations.

Levitt warned that states that have already handed over their voter rolls “may be abetting a violation of federal law.” and said he believes that with the Justice Department’s information requests framed as they are now, “the federal government is absolutely violating the law.”

The DOJ has said its effort is aimed at enforcing voting rights laws and improving public faith in elections. The agency would not answer questions about the applicability of the privacy act.

Texas Secretary of State officials declined to comment on whether the agency is considering Privacy Act protections as it works to fulfill the request.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Why states should scrutinize the Justice Department’s requests for voter rolls

2025-08-11T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

The U.S. Justice Department has begun asking states to hand over lots of information, including voter rolls, in its campaign to check compliance with federal voting laws. Pennsylvania got an expanded request this week. Eventually, all 50 states will be contacted.

State officials tell Votebeat they are hesitant to respond to the requests, which haven’t provided much explanation of how the data will be used or protected.

Their reluctance makes sense: The requests themselves might violate federal law.

Some states, including Maine, have already said no to the Justice Department’s request. Others are still reviewing them.

The response echoes what we saw in 2017, when a different arm of the Trump administration — the voter fraud commission he appointed to investigate his spurious claims — asked every state for their voter rolls.

That push collapsed quickly after a bipartisan outcry. Mississippi’s then-secretary of state, Republican Delbert Hosemann, famously told the commission it could "go jump in the Gulf of Mexico" (a rebuke that Maine’s secretary of state nodded to this year, when he said the DOJ could "jump in the Gulf of Maine“).

It remains to be seen whether Republican state officials will be more receptive now that 1) time has passed 2) “election integrity” has become a bigger part of their brand, and 3) the request is coming through DOJ channels. But the concerns — vague legal justification, privacy risks, and lack of clarity on data use — remain essentially the same. And this time, states are being asked for a lot more. The letters sent to states include requests for information on everything from noncitizen voter registration to election procedures. In the letter to Colorado, the DOJ asked for basically everything.

The Privacy Act of 1974 lays out strict guidelines for data requests by federal agencies. One key requirement is that agencies must publish a System of Records Notice, a public explanation of what data they’re collecting, why they need it, and how they intend to use and store it.

The law is meant to prevent government overreach and protect individual privacy. Even if the motives for the underlying investigation are legitimate, the process has to be, too.

If the Justice Department is skipping the System of Records step, or not following the rest of the required process, it can erode the already fragile trust that voters and election officials have in the system. And it may be violating federal law.

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. As the Washington Post reported last month, local election officials in Colorado recently reported receiving “murky” and unofficial-seeming requests for access to voting machines. Some of those requests even claimed to be from federal authorities, though they offered no documentation to back that up. Like the DOJ’s voter roll push, these requests appear designed to test the limits of what election officials will agree to.

Once the government crosses the line into sweeping, unexplained grabs for voter data and more, it’s hard to walk it back. If states cave to these requests without demanding a clear legal foundation, they are inviting future administrations to make more such requests. And next time, it’ll be even harder to say no.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Another Votec financial scare puts Texas election officials in a bind

2025-08-05T21:48:50+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

A company that makes software used by Texas’ largest counties to manage voter registration data has thrown election officials for a loop again with the departure of two top executives and mixed messages about its financial viability, just months before a critical statewide election.

The latest word from Votec Corp.’s chairman is that the company has secured enough funds to continue operating for now. But the California-based company’s dire warnings about a shutdown just days earlier spooked some county election officials, who must now consider whether to try to switch to a new commercial vendor, migrate to a state-run system that they have concerns about, or stick with an unsteady partner in Votec.

The uncertainty follows a similar scare last year, when Votec demanded a 35% surcharge from its customers to help it stay afloat. And it comes as election officials prepare for a constitutional amendment election Nov. 4, a potential redrawing of legislative districts, and next year’s primary election.

“This is incredibly frustrating,” said Kaleb Breaux, elections administrator in Collin County, a Votec customer and one of the state’s most populous counties. “Are we going to have the support we need? If something fails in the middle of an election, is someone going to be on the other end of the line to answer our call?”

Votec chairman’s latest plea for emergency funds

Software like Votec’s is crucial for pulling off elections and ensuring that voters are assigned to the correct precinct and get the right ballot. The massive databases help election officials manage and store voters’ addresses and voting history, plus images of registration applications, signatures, ballot envelopes, and other records that help reaffirm the security and integrity of elections. The data also allows campaigns and other community groups to access constituent information.

Votec is one of three companies approved to provide voter registration data services in Texas. Its Vemacs product is used by 26 counties, including Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Cameron, and Collin.

That’s down from 33 before last year’s financial scare, when Votec demanded that its customers pay an emergency surcharge to save the company from imminent collapse. Bexar County paid the company nearly $50,000, while some other counties switched to other vendors or the state’s system ahead of the 2024 election.

On Thursday, a new crisis erupted when Votec founder and Chairman John Medcalf emailed the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and a Texas state senator, whom he declined to name, saying that the company needed another emergency infusion.

“Votec will need to close down Monday without some guarantee of financing,” Medcalf wrote in the email to state officials, which he shared with Votebeat. He suggested the state work with him to entice “Mark Cuban or Elon Musk or Joe Rogan to see us through this spell for a nice return on their investment and some interesting insights.”

On Friday, Medcalf told Votebeat that the company was no longer able to make payroll. Votec CEO Trevor Hayward and President Randy Propp both resigned that day.

But this week, Medcalf said client counties stepped in again to rescue the company, though he won’t say which ones. By Tuesday morning, Medcalf had emailed his clients in Texas saying Votec’s “doors and portals are open again.” He added that the company now has a financial cushion and that he’s been communicating with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to “monitor our efforts to make the next 18 months smooth sailing for you and the state.”

Medcalf told Votebeat that the company, which employs about 20 people, has the staff to support county election officials in the coming months. “They’re still all here,” he said. “Could one or two of them say, ‘I can’t take it anymore?’ Of course. But so far, we seem to be a pretty solid team.”

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it has not communicated with Medcalf.

State is working on a backup option for Votec’s clients

State officials have been working with counties on contingency plans to guard against disruptions to election data services. After Medcalf’s first demand for money, officials with the Secretary of State’s Office began offering counties the opportunity to upload their data to the state’s voter registration management system at no cost. That system, Texas Election Administration Management, or TEAM, was upgraded this summer.

Alicia Pierce, spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State, said the agency will ensure counties have the data they need “to conduct secure and accurate elections.”

However, some election officials, especially in the state’s largest counties, still have concerns about whether the updated TEAM can handle data for voters from the entire state. And they’re not sure they’d have enough time between now and November to switch to TEAM or another vendor.

In Dallas County, elections administrator Heider Garcia said the county has “a plan in place to continue to run normally.” He declined to comment about whether he’d continue to use Votec. In Harris County, the clerk’s office and the tax assessor collector both use Votec products and said that they had contingency plans in place or in the works.

Michele Carew, the Bexar County elections administrator, said the county’s contract with Votec was set to end at the end of this month and that she’d already intended not to renew it. The county is in the process of contracting with state-approved vendor VR Systems.

She said the county has been working with the state to ensure that a Votec shutdown wouldn’t interfere with planning for upcoming elections.

In Collin County, officials declined to pay last year’s requested $40,000 surcharge but continued to use Votec’s software and electronic pollbooks. Breaux, the election administrator, said the company’s system has always worked well and the county was in the process of renewing its contract with the company when it got the surprising notice that Votec was in financial straits again.

Now, Breaux is on a tight schedule to figure out whether to stay with Votec or find a new vendor.

“The path of least resistance would be to stay with them and limp through with them,” Breaux said. “But I have some concerns about the support.”

Medcalf blames Texas counties for Votec’s problems

Medcalf, who founded Votec in the 1980s, managed the voter registration systems in Nevada’s largest counties before the state cut ties with him last year. Every county in Nevada now uses the state’s recently launched system developed by vendor KnowInk. Medcalf told Votebeat last year that he had a falling out with one of the state’s election officials.

He has clashed with officials in Texas as well. In an email to Bexar County management reviewed by Votebeat, Medcalf complained that Carew, the new elections director, “has never returned a phone message of mine. Michele wouldn’t be the first [election administrator] who does a fine job but has no background to deal with what it takes to qualify a complex system to support that work.”

Carew told Votebeat she would typically communicate with the company’s customer service or the CEO. She said that email Medcalf wrote about her “irrevocably severed the relationship between Votec and Bexar County elections.”

Medcalf told Votebeat that his company’s latest financial troubles in Texas were due in part to Bexar County’s failure to make payments and Harris County’s delayed payments.

Carew denied his claims and said Bexar’s next payment was not due until the end of August. The Harris County Clerk’s Office told Votebeat in an email that “any suggestion that non-payment from Harris County is the cause of the vendor’s closure is inaccurate, given that the company has been experiencing financial issues for over a year.”

When asked if the surprise surcharge he imposed on Texas counties last year may have contributed to a loss of business in Texas, Medcalf said, “I’m sure it did.”

“That was a bad call on my part,” he said. “It’s totally my responsibility. I was thinking that people would not have trouble getting that much money.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

State election directors press for answers on using SAVE to check voter citizenship

2025-07-28T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

This week, officials gathered at an Oklahoma City hotel for the annual National Association of State Election Directors conference. The hotel was reportedly haunted by “an amorous Prohibition-era chambermaid” named Effie, though no suspected ghost sightings were reported to Votebeat.

Election officials were, perhaps, haunted by other things.

Since President Donald Trump took office again, his Justice Department has been sending out letters to states with sweeping requests for information about how they maintain their voter rolls and ensure that only eligible people are registered.

Meanwhile, the administration is urging election officials around the country to use an existing federal immigration database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program for a new purpose: to verify voters’ eligibility. The Department of Homeland Security recently overhauled SAVE to make it easier to search, and free for states to use.

Experts have questioned the accuracy and reliability of the data, given how quickly the system changes to SAVE were made this year. They’ve also raised concerns about how the federal government is using data uploaded by states, and whether using the tool outside its intended purpose could put people’ privacy or voting rights at risk.

For election officials who may share some of those concerns, the conference offered an opportunity to directly query a representative of the agency that oversees SAVE, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, about how it works. It was one of several panels dedicated to various tools and databases available to help with voter registration and voter list maintenance.

Government agencies have been using versions of SAVE since the 1980s to verify people’s citizenship status and help determine whether they are eligible for benefits, David Jennings, who oversees policy and technology operations for the SAVE program, explained to state election directors.

The Trump administration this year pushed for adapting SAVE for checking voter rolls as well, as part of its campaign to eliminate the risk of noncitizen voting.

Following directives in Trump’s March executive order on elections, the government revamped the SAVE program so it allows state election officials to upload voter registration records for verification in bulk, instead of one by one. And whereas state officials previously could search it using only an alien number or naturalization certificate number, they now can also search by Social Security number. And there’s no longer a fee for states to use it.

U.S. CIS says 23 states currently have agreements to use SAVE for voter verification, including Texas. Last month, Texas referred 33 potential noncitizen voters to the state Attorney General’s Office for investigation, after running searches through SAVE. State officials said they were also able to use SAVE to validate the citizenship of “a ton” of other voters. Louisiana, Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee, and others have also touted agreements to access SAVE.

Jennings told election officials that SAVE does not store citizenship and immigration information in a centralized database. Rather, he said, it’s a search tool that “queries information for a person from 10 to 15 databases across the federal government.” He didn’t share details about the sources of the data but pointed to a 2020 public notice on the agency’s website explaining in more detail how the data is handled and sourced.

Judd Choate, the state elections director for Colorado, asked Jennings how U.S. CIS handles the results of the searches that states conduct: “If you send us somebody that looks like they’re not a U.S. citizen, do you capture that information and give it to another agency — say, the Department of Homeland Security?”

Jennings said SAVE does not share case information with other agencies. “No, we don’t refer a noncitizen to ICE,” he said, referring to the immigration enforcement agency that has been conducting raids around the country.

Jennings said that for audit purposes, SAVE retains records for 10 years.

“What we do maintain in the log is exactly what you sent us, and exactly what we sent you back,” he said.

Jennings also stressed that SAVE does not determine whether a person qualifies for a benefit or whether a person is eligible to register to vote. “SAVE is a tool in your tool belt to help you to make that decision,” Jennings said.

Rob Rock, Rhode Island’s deputy secretary of state, asked Jennings how quickly immigration records were updated in the system. That happens in real time, Jennings responded. For example, the records of someone who becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen will update soon after they take the oath of allegiance at their naturalization ceremony.

Other panels at the conference also focused on voter registration list maintenance, including one session featuring officials from Texas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Nevada talking about the modernization of their voter registration systems.

During one panel on implementation of complex election projects, jazz music burst from the loudspeakers. The cause was not apparent, though hotel IT staff tended to it quickly. Votebeat does suspect Effie had something to do with it.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

As Texas dives into federal SAVE database to verify voter citizenship, some experts are worried

2025-07-22T19:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas election officials are praising a revamped federal immigration database that they’ve begun using to validate the citizenship of registered voters.

Texas is one of the earliest states to start using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ overhauled SAVE database to check voters’ eligibility. That comes after the Trump administration, in its campaign to eliminate the risk of noncitizen voting, made the database free for states to use and easier to search.

But some experts and watchdogs warn that the changes haven’t necessarily made the system more reliable. They say the administration hasn’t publicly released enough information about it, which makes it difficult to assess how complete and accurate the search results are, and whether there are enough safeguards to protect people’s privacy and voting rights.

Texas officials have repeatedly suggested in recent years that the state has a problem with noncitizens registering to vote, citing discoveries of allegedly large numbers of noncitizens on voter rolls. But the statements and numbers haven’t always held up under scrutiny, and the state has had to revamp its verification process after many of people identified as potential noncitizens turned out to be naturalized citizens who were flagged due to outdated data.

The Trump administration has promoted SAVE as a source of real-time information on immigration status. With the changes it made to the system, state election officials can now upload voter registration records in bulk for verification, instead of one by one, or search records individually by Social Security number — and they don’t have to pay for it.

As of May 23, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office used the SAVE database to attempt to check at least 1,657 records, according to public records obtained by the nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight and shared with Votebeat and The Texas Tribune. Nearly 300 of those searches returned errors, the records show, which the Secretary of State’s Office said occurred during testing and may have been caused by duplicate records or information in the wrong format.

In June, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced that after further checking results produced by SAVE, it had referred 33 potential noncitizens for investigation by the Texas Attorney General’s Office — people it said had voted in the November 2024 general election. More than 11 million Texans cast ballots in that election.

“The SAVE is the most current and accurate database available to states to verify citizenship, and we appreciate the Trump Administration for giving us access to it free of charge,” said Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. “It is one of many data sets we use to ensure accurate voter rolls.”

In a June call with election officials from across the state, according to audio obtained and reviewed by Votebeat, state Elections Director Christina Adkins said the tool has “really accurate data” and helped her office validate the citizenship status of “a ton” of naturalized citizens, confirming they are eligible to be on the rolls and cast ballots.

Adkins didn’t say on the call where the people identified as potential noncitizens were registered. But she said her office took careful steps and reached out to counties before referring the cases to the attorney general to “make sure there weren’t any mistakes.”

American Oversight obtained a copy of the agreement between the Secretary of State’s Office and federal authorities on the use of SAVE. Under the agreement, Texas must provide registrants who “are not verified” as U.S. citizens by SAVE with the opportunity to use the state’s existing process to appeal and correct the records prior to a final decision, “if necessary.”

Concerns about using SAVE for verifying voter eligibility

The SAVE database has been available since the 1980s, primarily for state and local government agencies to check people’s immigration status and determine whether they’re eligible for licenses and other benefits. But until recently, it was impractical as a way to verify voters’ eligibility. Election officials could check only one record at a time, and had to pay for each search.

Election officials have said a tool like SAVE could be useful for determining voter eligibility — assuming it’s accurate. But data privacy and legal experts are concerned about adapting SAVE for the purpose of maintaining voter rolls. They have questioned the accuracy and reliability of the data, given how quickly the system changes were made this year, as well as how the federal government is using data uploaded by states.

John Davisson, director of litigation with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy watchdog group, said SAVE shouldn’t be used for purposes it wasn’t originally designed for, especially without robust scrutiny and input from both Congress and the public.

“If there’s a sort of mission creep, if it starts to expand, that’s upending the expectations of the people who approved and created the system in the first place,” Davisson said. “It’s upending the expectations of the public and the people who are submitting to verification against this database. And that’s a privacy violation.”

Justin Levitt, a constitutional law expert who worked in the Justice Department during the Obama administration, said the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the U.S. CIS, hasn’t yet issued the public notice required under the Privacy Act, a federal law that regulates the collection, use, and dissemination of information about individuals by federal agencies. DHS, he said, should be able to tell the public how it is using the data that’s being uploaded by the states.

“The whole point of the Privacy Act is I shouldn’t have to guess at that answer, that they should tell us first: What are you planning on? How do you plan on using this data?” he said in an interview with Votebeat.

In a joint statement last week, Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla of California, Gary Peters of Michigan, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon said the SAVE overhaul raises privacy questions that require more documentation from DHS.

They said they were concerned that data quality issues may cause “state and local officials who rely on the program to receive false positives or incomplete results.”

American Oversight, the watchdog group that obtained the documents shared with Votebeat and the Tribune, said that even with the protocol for notifying registrants who are flagged, it was still concerned about whether voters were adequately protected from any flawed data matches. It pointed to the language in the agreement between the Secretary of State’s Office and DHS that called for outreach to voters “if necessary.”

“This lack of transparency — combined with vague, watered-down safeguards — creates real risk for wrongful voter purges and disenfranchisement,” said Chioma Chukwu, the group’s executive director. “That’s why public scrutiny is so essential.”

Maintaining voter rolls is up to county registrars

The agreement between DHS and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, does not address whether the federal government is retaining data uploaded by state officials. U.S. CIS did not respond to a specific question about that, but in an emailed statement, the agency called SAVE “a critical tool for state and local governments to access information to safeguard the integrity of elections across the country.”

The agency added that “SAVE does not kick eligible voters off the voter rolls.”

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office can’t add voters to the rolls or remove them. That is up to county voter registrars, who are required by state law to conduct voter list maintenance daily. Voter registrars verify the eligibility of voters through multiple records, from sources including the Bureau of Vital Statistics, district courts, and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

According to the state election code, if voter registrars believe a person is not eligible, the registrar must notify the person in writing that their registration status is being reviewed. The notice has to include a request for information relevant to determining the voter’s eligibility for registration, such as proof of citizenship, age, or address verification. The voter then has 30 days to respond before their registration is canceled.

Adkins said the state is talking to U.S. CIS about whether the SAVE database can be used more broadly. For instance, she said, the data could be used to validate the registration and eligibility of thousands of other voters on the rolls beyond immigrants, and address other challenges to registration received by election officials.

Last year, county election departments across the state were flooded with formal challenges from activists questioning whether the registrations of tens of thousands of voters were valid. The challenges created backlogs and burdened election officials as they prepared for a presidential election.

“I personally think that it would be fantastic if we can utilize that in a way to give validations to voters,” she said, “so that there is no cloud of suspicion over their registration, so that it can’t be challenged at a later date.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

U.S. Justice Department peppers state election officials with data requests to enforce Trump directives

2025-07-17T16:15:15+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Justice has unnerved some state election officials by issuing sweeping requests for information that it says is pertinent to enforcing federal election laws and investigating voting crimes, which President Donald Trump has identified as priorities.

In letters sent to at least a dozen states over the past two months, according to documents obtained by Votebeat and reported elsewhere, the department asked for varied sets of data and records, including voter rolls, information on potential election and voting crimes, data from past elections, and details about procedures for maintaining voter lists and checking voters’ eligibility.

State officials say privately that they have been struck by the scope of the requests and uncertainty around what the administration plans to do with the information, and have been talking to one another about them. Many of these officials have faced years of near-constant scrutiny as Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of election malfeasance, and the president has tried to use his influence and official authority to rewrite the history of his 2020 election loss.

While the requests so far are mostly for data or procedures that are public information or accessible by law to the Justice Department, election law experts said, some of them were more questionable.

Bryan Sells, a voting rights lawyer who worked at the Justice Department during the Obama administration, said federal law has long given the department the right to access some state data related to voter registrations, and it’s not uncommon or improper for it to use that power.

“But I think the question I had after reading these emails is whether what they’re really looking for goes beyond what Congress allowed for,” he said.

For example, the Justice Department sent Michigan and Arizona officials emails asking for information on “individuals who have registered to vote or have voted in your state despite being ineligible to vote.” That request arguably falls within the department’s purview, Sells said. But a request for information on people “who may otherwise have engaged in unlawful conduct relevant to the election process” is broad and might not be.

Kory Langhofer, a Republican lawyer who has been counsel for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign in Arizona, said that it’s fair to be cautious, or even skeptical of broad data requests from the federal government.

But Langhofer said, “I don’t think it’s reasonable to say the sky is falling, because the information requested here is already in the hands of both the state and federal governments,” if not necessarily the Justice Department specifically.

President’s executive order stressed election law enforcement

The information requests are another example of the Justice Department’s shift in enforcement priorities under the Trump administration toward finding and prosecuting election crimes, something the president explicitly called on the attorney general to do in a March executive order on elections.

Federal courts have blocked key provisions of the order from going into effect, but the Justice Department and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission have begun taking steps to implement some other provisions that are still in force.

That appears to be the goal of a recent round of Justice Department correspondence to key swing states including Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. In emails obtained by Votebeat, the department asks for a call with a goal of setting up an agreement to share information on election crimes, such as individuals providing false information on registration forms or registering to vote when they are ineligible.

“With your cooperation, we plan to use this information to enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in at least two such emails.

Trump’s executive order instructs the Justice Department to attempt to establish such information-sharing agreements with states, and orders it to “prioritize enforcement of Federal election integrity laws” in any state that declines to do so, as well as consider withholding federal grants to such states.

The Justice Department declined to comment for this story.

Michigan’s Department of State said it is reviewing the request. Officials in Pennsylvania said that they met with Justice Department officials and that “the discussion was consistent with our longstanding cooperation with our federal partners to protect the integrity of elections.”

JP Martin, a spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, said the office is “dealing with DOJ in a good faith manner while ensuring we are following the letter of federal and state laws.”

States receive requests for voter rolls

Meanwhile, several states are receiving Justice Department requests for their voter rolls, and information about voter roll cleaning. They include Wisconsin, where the department asked in June for a copy of its voter rolls, along with responses to several questions about voter registration activities, in response to complaints the department said it had received about possible violations of federal voting law. Eight other states received similar requests, the Washington Post reported.

Wisconsin election officials directed the department to an online portal where the public version of the voter rolls could be purchased for $12,500.

Trump’s executive order also directs the Homeland Security Department to review “publicly available” versions of the voter lists “alongside Federal immigration databases … for consistency with Federal requirements.”

The DOJ requests are presumably an attempt to “gather all the relevant data in one place, conduct an authoritative study, and put these issues to rest,” Langhofer said, referring to questions Republicans have repeatedly raised about whether ineligible voters are casting ballots.

“It is important to know that our voters are citizens and residents, and are not voting in more than one jurisdiction,” he said in a text message. “If there is a problem in one of those areas, we should fix it — and if there is *not* a problem there, people should know that our system works well.”

But election officials appear to be concerned, said David Becker, an election lawyer who previously worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and now leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

The recent communications from the department are “odd at the least, and it is an intentional rebalancing of the federal-state dynamic at worst,” Becker said.

Earlier this week, in response to calls from election officials about the Justice Department’s requests, Becker hosted a conference call that was attended by more than 350 state and local election officials from 33 states, which he said is a reflection of the anxiety about possible federal overreach.

Becker noted that the letters followed a series of aggressive administration actions on elections since Trump returned to office, including a lawsuit against Orange County, California, over access to voter data, and a presidential directive demanding an investigation into Chris Krebs, the nation’s former top cybersecurity official. Krebs angered Trump in 2020 by contradicting his assertion that his election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.

“All of these seem designed not to create a viable election policy, but to lay the groundwork to claim the 2026 and 2028 elections are stolen, just as the president did with the 2020 and 2022 elections,” Becker said. “And the troubling part is, it seems now the White House is prepared to use the full weight of the government to spread those claims.”

Votebeat reporters Hayley Harding and Alexander Shur contributed to this report.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org. Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Texas is investigating votes by potential noncitizens in 2020 and 2022 elections

2025-07-15T19:02:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday that he is investigating “more than 100 potential noncitizens” suspected of casting more than 200 ballots during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.

Paxton’s news release said most of the cases involve Harris County voters. His office is also investigating possible instances in Guadalupe, Cameron, and Eastland counties, using information obtained from the Texas Secretary of State, the news release said.

In Texas, about 11 million voters cast ballots in Texas in the November 2020 presidential election, and more than 8 million in the November 2022 general election. The more than 200 ballots Paxton cited for the two full election cycles would amount to around one-thousandth of 1% of the ballots cast in just the two general elections combined.

Noncitizen voting is illegal, and documented cases of it are rare, but Republicans have argued that even a single instance is too many. They’ve called for eliminating the threat of noncitizen voting through state and federal legislation requiring documentary proof of citizenship from voters. Some states, including Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Wyoming, have recently passed such laws. But a bill in Texas failed to pass during the regular legislative session that ended in June.

In November, Texas voters will be asked to approve a constitutional amendment affirming that only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote, which is already codified in state and federal law.

To encourage states to crack down on the risk of noncitizen voting, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March directing the Department of Homeland Security to provide all states free access to SAVE, a federal database managed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, where election officials can check the citizenship status of registered voters.

Last month, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office announced it had referred 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the November 2024 election to the attorney general’s office. Paxton said his office is also investigating those cases.

“If you’re a noncitizen who illegally cast a ballot, you will face the full force of the law,” Paxton said in Tuesday’s news release.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Here’s what Maricopa County voters should do if they get proof-of-citizenship request

2025-07-09T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Maricopa County voters who recently received letters from the Recorder’s Office about their registration status may be confused by the two separate mailings, including one that’s incorrect. But no matter what, they will need to act soon to make sure they are able to continue to vote in state and local elections.

The Recorder’s Office sent the first letter in error to 83,000 voters, telling them the office had gotten notice they had moved out of state and they would be removed from the active voter rolls if they didn’t act. Flummoxed voters began receiving those mailings on June 26.

The office then sent out the mailing that the voters were supposed to get, with an added explanation in bold at the top explaining that the initial mailing was a mistake. This letter told voters about how they would need to provide documentation proving their U.S. citizenship, because of a separate error that affected 200,000 voters statewide.

In Maricopa County these voters will have 90 days to respond with a birth certificate, passport or other document. If they do not, they will be classified as federal-only voters, and permitted to vote only in presidential and congressional races.

The letters prompted widespread confusion among recipients and demands for an explanation. After the incorrect letter went out, average wait times at the county’s call center jumped from just seconds to 10 minutes or more for three days, and peaked at more than 40 minutes, according to data Votebeat obtained through public records requests.

The Recorder’s Office did not make a public statement about the incorrect letters for more than a day after voters began to receive them, which meant public officials and residents searching for information from the office could not find any. Votebeat first reported the incorrect mailing on June 26, and many voters said that story provided the only information they were able to obtain.

Many voters later told Votebeat that they believed the letter was a sign of something nefarious.

“My wife and I both got one and thought someone had used info of ours from a data leak to take out fraudulent IDs,” said Shane Watson, of Phoenix.

Kristopher Bliznick of Phoenix said he “thought it was some sort of voter suppression.”

“I thought they were trying to passively push people off the voter rolls,” he said.

Why some longtime Arizona voters are being asked to prove their citizenship

The letters to voters are part of the effort underway in all Arizona counties to correct a state record-keeping error that was disclosed last summer. For 20 years, the state said, it had failed to collect documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for some voters when they first registered to vote or updated their registration after moving across county lines. About 200,000 voters, or roughly 5% of the state’s voter roll, were caught up in that error, including the 83,000 Maricopa County voters who received the letters from the Recorder’s Office.

These voters are all longtime residents, and some have lived in Arizona and been registered to vote for decades. But because state law requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, these voters will now need to provide that proof to continue to vote a full ballot.

Federal law does not require documentary proof of citizenship. It requires voters to attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. Arizona voters who do not provide citizenship proof can still vote in federal elections, because they have already attested to their citizenship when registering to vote.

What Maricopa County voters should do if they receive the letters

In Maricopa County, the second letter — which is dated June 27 at the top — explains how affected voters can resolve the problem.

The voters can use the return envelope provided to send back their name, address, and a copy of a document proving their citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport. The voters can also send the documentation by email to voterinfo@maricopa.gov, or bring the documentation to the Recorder’s Office at 301 W. Jefferson Street in Phoenix.

Voters in other counties who have received similar letters should contact their recorder’s office to learn how to fix the problem.

The Secretary of State’s Office initially provided a way for voters to check online whether they were on the list of affected voters, but isn’t doing that anymore. Voters who have questions about their record can contact their county recorder’s office.

Why incorrect letters went out

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and his staff at first blamed Complete Print Shop, a vendor the office hired to send the letters, for the incorrect mailing. The office said in its first statement that the vendor “has taken full responsibility for the mistake.”

But emails first reported by 12 News on June 30 showed an employee of the Recorder’s Office had approved a proof of the incorrect letter. And in an email sent a few days after the error was uncovered, a Complete Print Shop employee told a county staff member looking into the issue that “the proof using the wrong template was sent and approved by the recorder office.”

Nonetheless, the emails showed that Complete Print Shop said the mailing of the incorrect letter constituted a mistake on its part, and confirmed that it would mail a corrected letter at its own expense.

After those emails were publicly released, Heap put out a second statement confirming that his office had erroneously approved the proof of the incorrect letter.

Complete Print Shop did not respond to phone calls and emails requesting comment.

Longtime voters outside of Maricopa County are also being asked to prove citizenship

The 83,000 Maricopa County voters who received the letters are among the 200,000 voters in the state who are being asked to prove their citizenship because of the state error.

Counties are notifying voters on their own timelines, with their own processes to collect the documentation.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes at first mentioned creating an online portal where voters could securely upload their documents, but that did not occur, and counties instead are left to collect the documents through whatever methods they can.

The requests for documents have confused voters across the state. And the consequences for voters who don’t provide the documents will depend on the county they live in. Maricopa County is making them federal-only voters, while other counties currently plan to eventually take the voters off of the rolls entirely, or make no change to their voter status at all.

Attorney General Kris Mayes is expected to issue a formal opinion on how counties should resolve the registration status of people who don’t provide citizenship proof in time.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Maricopa County Recorder’s Office mails incorrect letters to 83,000 voters

2025-06-27T02:04:21+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office mailed about 83,000 voters an incorrect letter warning them that they would be moved to the inactive voter list if they didn’t respond, a mistake the Recorder’s Office blamed on a printing error.

The voters, roughly 3% of the total registered voters in Maricopa County, were supposed to receive a different letter entirely, according to Sam Stone, chief of staff in the Recorder’s Office.

The letter’s recipients were incorrectly told that the Recorder’s Office had received notification from the Arizona Department of Transportation that they had obtained a driver’s license in a different state. The voters were also told they would be moved to the inactive voter list if they didn’t respond within 90 days.

These voters will not be moved to the inactive voter list, Stone confirmed.

The owner of the print shop could not immediately be reached for comment.

The voters were supposed to be sent a letter telling them that they are among those caught in a state error and will need to provide their proof of citizenship in order to continue to be able to vote a full ballot.

Under state law, Arizona voters must provide citizenship proof to vote in state and local elections. But the state announced last summer that they had not collected the citizenship proof from about 200,000 voters statewide. Some Arizona counties have started notifying these voters in the mail of the need to prove their citizenship, and Maricopa County’s mailing was supposed to do so as well.

It’s unclear when the correct letter will be sent to the affected voters.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Longtime Maricopa County voters will soon get notices requesting proof of citizenship

2025-06-11T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Around 83,000 longtime Maricopa County residents will get a letter soon telling them that they will lose their eligibility to vote in state and local elections if they don’t provide proof of their citizenship.

The mailing is the response to a state error that is now forcing each Arizona county to ask affected voters to show citizenship proof, which is required under state law for people to vote in state and local elections. For nearly two decades, the state had failed to properly collect this documentation from people when they registered to vote, the Secretary of State’s Office disclosed last summer.

While other counties began sending letters earlier this year to affected voters, Maricopa County chose to wait until after May city elections.

Counties have taken different stances on how to handle eligibility for affected voters who don’t provide citizenship proof, including those who are trying to update their voter record. That has led to disparate treatment of voters across the state, a Votebeat analysis published in April found. Shortly afterward, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes cited Votebeat’s reporting in requesting an opinion from Attorney General Kris Mayes on how to treat voters equally in the future.

With one week to go before early voting begins for the July 15 special primary election for the 7th Congressional District, Mayes has not yet issued her opinion. Six counties with voters in that district will send out mail ballots to eligible voters and open early-voting locations on June 18. But affected voters in some counties may have seen their registration suspended or had their effort to update their registration blocked, which could cause problems for them at the polls.

That shouldn’t be the case in Maricopa County, which hasn’t touched the affected voters’ statuses and doesn’t plan to before the election. But they need to provide proof of citizenship to the Recorder’s Office within 90 days of receiving the letter, or they will be eligible to vote only in federal races.

Notices leave some voters confused

The people affected by the error are residents who obtained their Arizona driver’s license before October 1996, and who registered to vote in Arizona at some point after 2004, including any moves across county lines within the state. The state discovered last year that more than 200,000 voters in this group had been marked as being eligible to vote a full ballot even though they hadn’t been asked for citizenship proof, and it left it to county officials to notify voters, collect the documents, and update their records.

Many voters who received the notices in the past several months didn’t know about the state error. In response to a Votebeat survey, dozens of voters said they were puzzled about why they were suddenly being asked to prove their citizenship.

Many respondents said they had been voting a full ballot for decades and thought the letter was part of Republican efforts nationally to identify noncitizens on the voter rolls, or perhaps an effort to target them personally.

“Seems fishy,” one wrote.

Confused voters have flooded their county recorder’s office phone lines. In Pima County, spokesperson Michael Truelsen said most callers have been kind and appreciative, but “there are a significant number of people who are upset, which is understandable.”

How counties are handling voter eligibility

There’s an added complication for affected voters trying to make sense of the state error: Their eligibility to vote in coming elections — at least for now — depends on which county they live in. This is partly because of a new state law that requires recorders to reject registrations filed on state forms if the voter does not provide proof of citizenship. A few county recorders have interpreted that to apply to people updating their voter record, along with new registrants, causing problems for the voters affected by the state error.

Officials in Maricopa and Pima have said they are not changing the eligibility of the affected voters before the coming congressional primary, so voters should not have any problems at the polls related to the glitch.

Pima County has started sending out notices, but the recorder’s office said it does not believe it has the right under state law to change the voters’ eligibility in these circumstances.

But affected voters in Pinal and Yuma counties might hit obstacles if they don’t prove documentation in time for the 7th District special primary.

Pinal County has already begun suspending registrations of the affected voters who try to update their voter record without providing the documentation. The county is telling the voters it will reactivate their registration once it receives the proof. The county wasn’t able to provide data yet about how many of the affected voters who tried to update their record have had their registration suspended.

In Yuma County, if officials get a request from an affected voter to update their registration, they respond with a letter requesting citizenship proof. If the voter does not receive the letter or respond, their record could remain outdated and they could face problems voting in the special election. About 110 voters have pending updates in the system for this reason, according to the recorder’s office.

The disparate treatment of voters could persist until Mayes’ office delivers its opinion or there’s some other type of resolution.

Voters can check the Secretary of State Office website at my.arizona.vote to see if their registration is active before voting. To find out if they are among the affected voters, they should call their county recorder’s office.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

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Texas’ proof-of-citizenship bill for voters fizzles at end of legislative session

2025-05-28T05:14:15+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

A high-profile bill that would have required documented proof of citizenship from Texas voters appears likely dead after it missed a key House deadline Tuesday, an unceremonious outcome for a Republican legislative priority.

Senate Bill 16 had 50 Republican co-sponsors in the House, and supporters widely expected it to sail through the chamber. The bill passed the Senate last month along party lines and with little debate. Republicans and allied groups around the country have been aggressively pushing for such citizenship proof measures at the state and federal level.

SB 16 and its companion, House Bill 5337, were among the most sweeping proof-of-citizenship proposals introduced anywhere in the country, applying not only to new applicants for voter registration but also retroactively to 18.6 million voters already registered in the state. Voting rights advocates warned that the bill would have disenfranchised eligible voters, and discouraged future voters by making registration and voting more burdensome.

Under the bill, voters who failed to provide proof of citizenship would have been allowed to cast ballots only in congressional races — and would have been barred from voting by mail. Mail voting is already tightly limited in Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott could still call a special session on the issue, and Republicans are moving forward with a plan to ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment affirming that only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote in Texas — something already established under Texas law. On Monday, Abbott signed a bill to add the measure to the ballot in the November constitutional amendment election. The proposed amendment does not include the enforcement and maintenance provisions to check for citizenship that were included in SB 16.

The two Central Texas Republicans who carried the proof-of-citizenship bills in their respective chambers, state Sen. Bryan Hughes and state Rep. Carrie Isaac, did not respond to Votebeat’s requests for comment Tuesday.

Some experts said the bill’s failure to reach a House vote may be due to the GOP-led Legislature’s waning focus on voting and election reform this session. In addition, the policy is “legally, procedurally, and financially complicated,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “It’s just a challenge to make this a new policy out of whole cloth, which would require a significant amount of investment in terms of time and money to facilitate and then legally to defend it.”

Some voting rights advocates who opposed the legislation said Tuesday that they were “cautiously optimistic” about its seeming demise. Lawmakers could attempt to revive the proposal by attaching its provisions as an amendment to another bill, but that would be difficult due to its complexity and scope, said Luis Figueroa, legislative and policy director for Every Texan, a nonprofit organization that advocates for equitable public policies.

“I think the leadership started to realize that it wasn’t as easy as they thought,” Figueroa said. “There’s a lot of people who would be affected by this. And ultimately, I think what prevailed was that they realized how this was going to create chaos at the polls.”

Inflated claims about noncitizens on the rolls fueled bill

In an analysis that accompanied the House version, Isaac cited an announcement by Abbott last fall claiming that 6,500 noncitizens had been removed from Texas voter rolls prior to 2024. But a joint investigation by Votebeat, Texas Tribune and ProPublica found Abbott’s numbers were inflated and, in some instances, wrong; the governor’s office later edited its own press release to change the description to say those removed were “potential” noncitizens.

In reality, the state removed only 581 people as noncitizens over three years. The rest of the 6,500 had simply failed to respond to a notice asking them to confirm their citizenship, which doesn’t mean they weren’t citizens. The investigation found that some eligible citizens had been flagged as potential noncitizens and removed from the rolls.

During a House Elections Committee debate on the bill earlier this month, state Rep. John Bucy, a Democrat from Austin and committee vice chair, described the data Isaac cited as “misleading” and pointed out that election officials already check the rolls for potential noncitizens.

Bucy said the scrutiny of the bill helped his colleagues in the House understand “how poorly this bill was thought out and written and what its impacts would have been.”

“It was done to harm people and also to scare people out of the process,” Bucy told Votebeat in an interview Tuesday. “It was a terrible voter suppression bill. We’re able to celebrate that this bad bill is not going to become law this session.”

Texas bill modeled after Arizona law blocked by federal courts

The legislation was modeled after an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections. But the Texas bill went further: It also would have barred voters who don’t provide citizenship proof from voting in presidential elections, a restriction currently blocked by federal courts in Arizona.

The Texas legislation would have also required local election officials to continually verify voters’ citizenship status — and subjected the officials to potential felony charges for any lapses. In Arizona, a similar requirement led to widespread confusion after a state error made it hard for officials to administer the law consistently.

Election administrators in Texas warned lawmakers that the bill could confuse voters about eligibility requirements and prove difficult to administer. They also had questions about how implementation would work at the county and state levels.

According to the bill’s fiscal note, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office would need to overhaul the state’s voter registration system to track proof of citizenship — something it currently does not do. The projected cost: $578,931 in 2026, followed by $84,000 annually.

The office said it would need two additional staff members to conduct citizenship verification reviews and to coordinate with counties, each costing $70,662 a year, plus benefits and other expenses totaling about $45,000 per year. The agency also estimated that the positions would require roughly $16,000 in setup costs in 2026.

That didn’t include costs that would have been borne by the counties.

Bucy said the Texas Legislature will likely continue to push for ways to ensure that only eligible Texans are registering to vote by looking at similar policies in other states.

“Hopefully by having a more thoughtful conversation, our counterparts across the aisle will realize how effective our current system already is,” Bucy said.

Read more of Votebeat’s coverage of Texas’ push for a proof-of-citizenship requirement:

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

A brazen case of election fraud unfolds in Millbourne, Pennsylvania. What are the lessons?

2025-05-21T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania‘s free newsletter here.

In October 2021, shortly before Election Day, Mahabubul Tayub was reviewing the voter rolls for the tiny Philadelphia suburb of Millbourne, where he was on the ballot as a candidate for mayor. Something didn’t seem right.

Dozens of new voters had been registered in recent weeks, he noticed, including some people he knew — people who didn’t live in Millbourne.

Tayub won the mayoral election that November, but it would take years for authorities to fully unravel what was behind the odd registrations he discovered: a brazen attempt at election fraud.

Just last month, his opponent in the 2021 race, Md Nurul Hasan, pleaded guilty in federal court to 33 felony charges in a failed scheme to steal the election by illegally registering dozens of nonresidents as Millbourne voters, then casting mail ballots on their behalf. Two associates also pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including fraudulent voter registration.

The case serves as a reality check amid a raging national debate over election security and the threat of voter fraud, especially in swing states like Pennsylvania. It’s proof, on one hand, that despite the many safeguards in place, voter fraud can happen at the local level, with lasting consequences for the community. On the other hand, it also helps illustrate how difficult it would be to orchestrate such fraud on a larger scale without detection.

“It seems to be in the local races this pops up the most, where there is a smaller turnout and there is possibly a direct connection between the person committing the bad act and the person who is going to benefit from the bad act,” said Jim Allen, the Delaware County elections director.

It’s in these small jurisdictions, he said, that “the temptation is highest and the risk-reward is highest.”

Md Nurul Hasan, left, vice president of the Millbourne borough council, and Mayor Mahabubul Tayub, right, during a council meeting on May 5, 2025. The two men ran against each other in the 2021 mayoral election.

Two immigrants became friends, then competitors

Millbourne is a tiny borough at the eastern edge of Delaware County, bordering Philadelphia. It covers less than 50 acres — not even a tenth of a square mile — and has roughly 1,200 residents.

The land was originally the homestead of the Sellers family, immigrants from Derbyshire, England. In the mid 1700s, John Sellers opened Millbourne Mills, a flour mill that drew its name from nearby Mill Creek, now Cobb’s Creek — the dividing line between Delaware County and Philadelphia.

As small as it is, the borough has seen huge demographic changes in recent decades. In 1980, it was more than 90% white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but by 2020, it was majority Asian. That was driven by immigration from South Asia, including India and Bangladesh.

Now, Market Street, the main thoroughfare through Millbourne, is dotted with South Asian grocery stores and boutiques selling Indian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani clothing. In 2023, Sellers Avenue — a short, mostly residential street named after the founding family — was given a second name: Bangladesh Avenue, a change that the local Bangladeshi community celebrated as a testament to their growing economic and political power.

Street signs mark Sellers Avenue, which is also called Bangladesh Avenue, in Millbourne, in recognition of the borough’s large Bangladeshi community. Sellers was the name of the family who owned the local flour mill, Millbourne Mills, for which the borough is named.

Tayub, 47, grew up in Chittagong, a port city in southeast Bangladesh. He graduated from university there with a degree in economics, and moved to Philadelphia, then Millbourne in the early 2000s. Hasan, 48, is also from Chittagong, and Tayub said the two had become friendly when he and Hasan lived in the same Philadelphia building.

“All the friends [who were] the same age, all the people from Bangladesh” socialized together, Tayub recalled.

Tayub also got to know former Millbourne Mayor Tom Kramer, a Democrat who later encouraged him to run for the five-member borough council. Tayub and Hasan both launched bids as Democrats and won in the 2015 municipal election, Tayub said. (Both Tayub and Hasan are U.S. citizens.)

In the spring of 2021, Kramer decided against running for another term as mayor. Tayub entered the race, with Kramer’s support. Hasan jumped in, too.

The town’s voters skewed heavily Democratic, which meant whoever won the party primary was likely to coast to victory in the fall. And whether it was Hasan or Tayub, the winner was poised to become the first Bangladesh-born mayor of a U.S. town, a prospect that received media attention in Bangladesh.

Tom Kramer, the former mayor of Millbourne, outside the borough's meeting hall. After Kramer decided not to seek reelection in 2021, Mahabubul Tayub entered the race with Kramer’s support.

Tayub said he wasn’t worried about the competition. “I have faith people know me,” he said.

Tayub won the primary by 18 votes out of 258 cast. But Hasan launched a write-in campaign for the November general election with the support of two other council members: Md Munsur Ali and Md Rafikul Islam, who lost his primary bid for reelection to the council. (Md is an abbreviation for Muhammad, and a common prefix for Bangladeshi names.)

How the plot unfolded

According to the federal indictment that laid out the men’s attempt to steal the election, the three conspired to obtain personal information from non-Millbourne residents — mainly friends of Hasan’s and Ali’s. Hasan then registered them to vote in Millbourne using the Department of State’s website, the indictment said — in some cases updating existing registrations by changing them to Millbourne addresses — and requested mail-in ballots on their behalf.

Millbourne Council member Md Munsur Ali, center, at the May 5 council meeting. Ali supported Md Nurul Hasan’s write-in bid for mayor in 2021.

The indictment said Hasan and Ali told the residents of nearby communities, including Upper Darby and Philadelphia, that they would not get in trouble, so long as they “did not vote in another election in November 2021.”

The indictment described an effort to “cover up the fact that defendant HASAN was requesting mail-in ballots for dozens of different people,” in which Hasan alternated email addresses when registering the voters, as well as the addresses, and requested that the mail ballots be sent to various locations.

According to the indictment, after receiving the ballots, Hasan and the others wrote in Hasan’s name for mayor and cast the ballots. In all, the indictment says, Hasan and his co-conspirators fraudulently registered nearly three dozen people.

Md Nurul Hasan, vice president of the Millbourne borough council, at the May 5 council meeting. Hasan pleaded guilty in April to 33 felony charges in a failed scheme to steal the 2021 mayoral election.

The indictment doesn’t identify the voters who were registered improperly, but one of the people whom Hasan registered confirmed his involvement and agreed to speak with Votebeat and Spotlight PA on condition of anonymity, out of concern that their involvement in the scheme could jeopardize their current employment.

The voter confirmed giving Hasan their driver’s license and allowing Hasan to proceed with the Millbourne registration and request a mail ballot for them.

“I trusted him and thought if I only give one vote, it’s not a problem,” said the person. “He made us fools.”

Suspicion ahead of Election Day: ‘I know these people.’

The votes hadn’t even been counted when Millbourne residents began to catch on to the scheme. According to the indictment, the borough added 29 voters between the primary and the November election. Given that Millbourne had fewer than 600 voters, it was a noticeable jump.

After Tayub grew suspicious of the new voter registrations, he brought his concerns to Kramer, the departing mayor, though neither man remembers exactly when.

“I know these people, they never live [in] Millbourne,” Tayub recalled thinking when he saw some newly registered names. “They live [in] Upper Darby.” Tayub’s attorney filed a complaint with the county elections office on Oct. 28, 2021. Tayub and Kramer said they also reported the matter to law enforcement around the time of the election. The district attorney’s office did not respond to a question about when and how they became aware of the matter.

Allen, the county elections director, said in an email that Hasan himself had questioned some voter registrations months earlier, in April, and his office had referred that matter to the district attorney. Allen wrote that in the months and years after Tayub’s complaints, “we received and responded to periodic inquiries from investigators.”

But Tayub and others in Millbourne said they grew frustrated because although the county was taking steps to look into the situation, for nearly a year afterward, they didn’t observe much progress.

“I couldn’t take it,” Tayub said during a recent interview with Votebeat and Spotlight PA.

Tayub, Kramer, and the borough’s secretary, Nancy Baulis, all met with an assistant district attorney before the May 2022 primary to discuss the status of the case, and Baulis and Kramer followed up with emails to county officials, including the district attorney, a few months later expressing frustration about the apparent lack of movement.

A map of Millbourne borough limits, dating to shortly after it split from Upper Darby, hangs in the borough’s meeting hall. The borough covers less than one-tenth of a square mile.

Kramer shared those emails with Votebeat and Spotlight PA. In his, he wrote that the assistant district attorney at the meeting had said that “this particular situation was very problematic politically,” and would generate media interest.

In an interview, Kramer said after sending that email, he reached out to the FBI. He said the investigation seemed to pick up after that.

The federal indictment came in February 2025.

The county separately charged Hasan with unlawful voting and related charges in March, and the case is pending. Because of that, District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said he could not discuss the matter, but said in an email that it is “inaccurate” to say that the county did not move quickly on the case before the FBI’s involvement.

Neither the district attorney’s office nor the assistant district attorney Kramer mentioned in his email responded to a request for comment on what Kramer said he was told at the May 2022 meeting.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said it “first became aware of the fraud allegations when it was contacted by federal law enforcement.”

“I don’t have any comment beyond stating the obvious, that there has been a prosecution,” Allen, the county election director, said. “It was a very difficult matter to investigate because you can’t make assumptions [based on] ‘Well, this house looks empty.’ Well, was it empty last fall? How do you know it’s empty? Did someone move out?”

Asked after an April borough council meeting if he had any explanation or comment, Hasan declined. “I don’t want to say anything now,” Hasan said.

Hasan’s attorney, Michael Dugan, said his client had no comment in response to a list of questions about the scheme. Islam, Ali, and their respective attorneys did not respond to emails with detailed questions for this story.

A boy rides a bike in Millbourne. The borough, which was 90% white in 1980, has seen huge demographic changes in recent decades, driven by immigration from South Asia, including India and Bangladesh.

The reality of election fraud vs. false claims

Cases like Millbourne’s muddy the intensifying national debate over election fraud: how widespread it is, what to do about it, and, more fundamentally, whether our election system can be trusted.

In recent years, an ecosystem of conspiracy theories about election manipulation has flourished online. Justin Grimmer, a political scientist at Stanford University, has researched the kind of broad claims of systematic election fraud that President Donald Trump and his allies made after the 2020 election to explain his loss, and said he has found no evidence of any such conspiracy.

But Grimmer’s research has turned up real instances of fraud, and they typically look like what happened in Millbourne — a local race, involving a relatively small number of votes.

“I think it gives some insight into why it would be very hard to do this in a broad national way,” he said. “This sort of fraud will leave lots of markers that people will end up discovering.”

The kind of “marker” Grimmer is referencing is the evidence Tayub was able to cite: actual names and addresses for the people who were drawn into the scheme.

Scaling a scheme like the one in Millbourne to one that involves enough votes to swing a statewide or national election would be hard, Grimmer said, because it would involve so many people.

The perpetrators here had access to driver’s license numbers, which according to the indictment they got directly from the voters. Allen, the county election director, said he was unaware of any other fraud case where voters gave out their personal information like this.

Stephanie Singer, a former Philadelphia city commissioner who was in office in 2016 when a ballot box stuffing scheme orchestrated by a former congressman was happening, has developed an algorithm that looks for anomalies in election results in the hopes of catching attempted fraud. Georgia is currently using the program to monitor its elections.

“Part of the job, not just of the board of elections, but of us as a democratic populace, is to guard against that,” she said. “The people who win the elections have access to money and power, and that means it’s really tempting to cheat.”

These attempts to cheat, even if they are initially successful at changing the results, are frequently caught, and election officials uphold those cases as examples of the safeguards working. Even so, the very fact that they occur can help destroy trust in elections.

Incidents like those in Millbourne and in a 2018 North Carolina congressional race that required a new election can serve as a “proof of concept” for those already suspicious that election fraud is happening, Grimmer said.

He recalled a county elections meeting in Oregon where he was trying to counter points made by a speaker who believed there was a broad conspiracy to steal elections, and cited a local incident from California as an example.

“In that setting, I can explain that it’s very different than the kind of conspiracy he’s alleging,” he said. “But if someone’s suspicious, all of a sudden it does reveal that it is possible to do this at least on a small scale.”

“If I’m not sufficiently persuasive in that meeting that it’s hard to scale this up,” he added, “you could see how this can further undermine trust” in election administration.

In Millbourne, the story isn’t over

Nearly four years after the election fraud, and a month after the guilty pleas, a tense mood still hung over Millbourne’s five-member borough council.

Two members resigned recently for reasons unrelated to the fraud case, which until recently left only three members, including Hasan and Ali. Despite their convictions, the men refused to immediately resign, and weren’t legally required to do so. Sentencing is scheduled for June.

By staying in office, Hasan and Ali allowed the borough to keep conducting council business. Without them, the council wouldn’t have had enough members.

But recent council meetings were marked by fraught exchanges over the matter.

Tom Kramer, the former mayor of Millbourne, points at Council Vice President Md Nurul Hasan while reading a statement during the May 5 council meeting. Kramer pressed Hasan and council member Md Munsur Ali on why they hadn’t resigned following their guilty pleas.

The borough council building is a tight space. A sliding partition and support pillar split the room between attendees and the U-shaped arrangement of folding tables where council members sit.

At an April 15 meeting, Kramer, the former mayor, stepped in front of the pillar when it was his turn to offer public comment.

“I’d like to address our felonious council people,” Kramer said, facing Hasan and Ali. “I wanted to ask if either one of you had any intention of resigning.”

The eyes of the other borough officials shifted to Hasan to see how he would respond.

Hasan, wearing a purple button-down shirt and gray jacket, looked uncomfortable as he answered, shifting his feet and looking around the room or down at his papers.

“Actually the court has a restriction,” he said. “I don’t want to say anything.”

But on May 13, borough officials confirmed that Hasan had formally submitted his resignation, though the council has yet to accept it.

As of Tuesday, Ali had not resigned.

Getting a public official out of elected office — outside of defeating them at the ballot box — is not simple, even if the official has pleaded guilty to a felony.

“It’s not just automatic,” James Gallagher, the borough’s solicitor, explained at an April meeting. He said Hasan and Ali’s resignations would be “in the best interest of the borough.”

The state Legislature can impeach local elected officials, but rarely uses that power. The other option is a quo warranto action, a legal action challenging a public official’s right to hold office, typically brought by the district attorney or state attorney general.

Chris Cosfol, a resident of Millbourne, said he wants the district attorney’s office to bring such an action. The ordeal has been “embarrassing” for the borough, he said, and he thinks the members should have automatically been removed from office once they entered a guilty plea.

Neither the district attorney’s office nor the attorney general has yet taken such action.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Texas online voter-registration measure gets a hearing, but runs out of time

2025-05-15T22:00:08+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas lawmakers held their first hearing in a decade on legislation that would allow people to register to vote online, a step that would revamp the current paper-based system, reduce costs, and bring Texas in line with most other states.

But the legislation missed key deadlines and has no clear path to passage this session. At least five similar bills filed this session by Democratic lawmakers did not get committee hearings.

The one that got a hearing Thursday is championed by state Rep. John Bucy, an Austin Democrat. House Bill 311 would direct the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to work with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the state’s Department of Information Resources to implement online voter registration.

Bucy acknowledged the bill’s slim chances, but told Votebeat that the hearing was a significant step toward implementing online voter registration in Texas.

“I’ve met with my colleagues over the years. I’ve met with the Secretary of State’s Office to learn the logistics of it,” Bucy said. “It seems like the appetite for it is growing.”

He has filed the legislation every year since he took office in 2019.

“I want people to have a fresh lens at looking at online voter registration,” he said. “Forty states have done it. They’ve done it because it’s efficient, because it’s safe and it’s accurate, and that’s what we should be doing here in Texas.”

Texas, which has more than 18 million registered voters, is one of only eight states without online voter registration.

Most people in the state have to fill out a paper form, whether they are registering through an election office or while getting a new driver’s license or state ID at the Texas Department of Public Safety. Only people who already have a Texas driver’s license and are engaging in an online transaction with DPS, such as renewing their license or updating their address, can use a DPS online portal to register to vote.

A Votebeat investigation last year found that Texas’ paper-based voter registration system has for years led to data-entry errors, delays, and in some cases, the disenfranchisement of voters. Manually entering the information of hundreds and thousands of voters ahead of an election also requires some counties to hire additional staff who must work long hours at taxpayer expense.

Bucy pointed out that if legislation to require proof-of-citizenship in Texas become law, it could create additional backlogs in the paper-based system.

The Texas legislation is modeled after a longstanding state law in Arizona that requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections. During a panel hosted by Votebeat Wednesday, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said online voter registration is “really important” to administering the requirement, especially when the system relies on state identification or drivers’ license data from other agencies.

In Arizona, election officials estimate that it costs 83 cents per registrant in staff time to enter data from a paper form; the staffing cost is only 3 cents when voters use the electronic voter registration application, according to Secure Democracy USA, a nonpartisan organization that advocates on election policy. That amount does not include the cost savings from less paper and postage.

At the hearing Thursday, Jennifer Doinoff, the Hays County elections administrator and a member of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, told lawmakers that the group supports the measure. The association is made up of Republican and Democratic elected officials and nonpartisan elections administrators across the state.

“The bill increases the accuracy of the voter records,” because voters put in the information directly, she said.

Lawmakers raised various concerns about the process, and election officials said other states have already addressed many issues. For example, state Rep. Carrie Isaac, a Republican from Central Texas, asked Doinoff how election officials would ensure that people aren’t trying to register multiple times. Doinoff responded that those risks aren’t limited to online voter registration, and election officials already have procedures in place to verify a voter’s identity and to check for duplicates.

State Rep. Valoree Swanson, a Republican from Harris County, said her main concern is the lack of a voter’s signature on an electronic form.

Bucy said the bill would require voters to have a state ID or driver’s license in order to register electronically, and counties would use those records to check for a signature.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Watch a conversation with two secretaries of state on proof of citizenship

2025-04-28T08:50:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Currently, there is no federal requirement to show proof of citizenship in order to vote. Instead, voters across the country must attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury.

President Donald Trump’s executive order on elections included a requirement for proof of citizenship. In Congress, the SAVE Act has a similar requirement and has passed the House. Three states have passed a proof-of-citizenship requirement in recent years, and several others are considering legislation.

As the United States appears to be moving closer to requiring some form of citizenship proof in order to vote, we invite you to join us for a conversation with two secretaries of state — from Arizona and New Hampshire — that will dive into the practical reality of administering elections with this requirement in place.

Arizona has had a documented proof of citizenship requirement for state and local elections for 20 years, and officials determined in 2024 that state systems didn’t properly record the citizenship status of around 200,000 voters.

This year, New Hampshire held its first election with a documented proof of citizenship requirement. Because it’s one of the six states that are not subject to the National Voter Registration Act, the law prevents anyone without documented proof of citizenship from voting in federal elections as well as state and local ones.

Our conversation with Secretaries of State Adrian Fontes of Arizona and David Scanlan of New Hampshire will be moderated by Votebeat Arizona reporter Jen Fifield.

Watch the discussion

The event, which took place May 14, was recorded. Watch below or on YouTube here.

Texas lawmakers hear concerns about bill to require proof of citizenship for voting

2025-04-25T17:19:23+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Democratic lawmakers and Texas voters spent nearly four hours at a legislative hearing Thursday demanding to know how a GOP-backed bill to require citizenship proof from voters would work, and warning that it could disenfranchise eligible Texans.

Houston voter Jacqueline Altman told members of the House Election Committee that it recently took her two days to obtain a copy of her birth certificate from the county, a process that required her to miss work to sit in county offices.

“When decisions are being made about these kinds of documentation, I ask that we take all of that into consideration.” said Altman, one of around a dozen Texans who testified in opposition to the bill.

House Bill 5337 goes further than the laws and proposals in some other states, in that it would apply retroactively to already-registered voters in Texas, not just new applicants. Texas has more than 18 million registered voters.

Officials with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told lawmakers Thursday that they estimate around 500,000 currently registered voters who don’t have a driver’s license number or Social Security number in their voter registration record would have to provide proof of citizenship.

That group could include many people who registered before the early 2000s, when federal voting laws began requiring people obtaining state-issued IDs or driver’s licenses to provide proof of citizenship or lawful presence in the U.S. Election officials said many are likely elderly.

How big a problem is noncitizen voting in Texas?

HB 5337 is identical to Senate Bill 16, which passed the state Senate along party lines and with little debate earlier this month. The House version of the legislation is co-sponsored by 50 Republican lawmakers.

The legislation is modeled after an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections. The Texas legislation would also bar voters who don’t provide citizenship proof from voting in presidential elections; a similar restriction in Arizona has so far been blocked by federal courts.

The Texas bills would also require local election officials to continually check the citizenship status of voters on their rolls — and subject the officials to potential felony charges if they lapse. In Arizona, a state error tracking proof of citizenship recently left election officials struggling to consistently administer the requirement.

Republican lawmakers in Texas have for months been responding to a nationwide GOP campaign to raise alarm about the threat of noncitizen voting, even though available evidence shows it is extremely rare.

In December, the Texas Secretary of State told the Legislature that in 2024, election officials cancelled 63 registrations for noncitizenship and 124 for failing to respond to a notice requesting proof of citizenship. Voters who failed to respond to a notice could still be citizens.

During Thursday’s Elections Committee hearing, state Rep. Carrie Isaac, a Dripping Springs Republican leading the push for the House version of the legislation, said the goal is to prevent all noncitizens from registering to vote.

Isaac cited an announcement by Gov. Greg Abbott last fall that 6,500 noncitizens had been removed from Texas voter rolls prior to 2024. An investigation by Votebeat, Texas Tribune and ProPublica found Abbott’s numbers were inflated and, in some instances, wrong.

In a span of three years, the state actually removed 581 people as noncitizens. The remaining 6,000 or so were people who had failed to respond to a notice asking to confirm their citizenship, which doesn’t mean they weren’t citizens. The investigation indeed found that some eligible citizens had been flagged as potential noncitizens and removed from the rolls.

State Rep. John Bucy, a Democrat from Austin and vice chair of the Elections Committee, described the data Isaac cited as “misleading” and pointed out that election officials already check the rolls for potential noncitizens.

“The system we have is working,” Bucy told Isaac. “We’re catching people. We’re cleaning the rolls, and they’re not voting.”

Isaac said the number of documented cases of noncitizens voting “may seem small” but said there was no reliable way to measure the scope of it “because the current system doesn’t require documentation of citizenship.”

The bill would cost state officials nearly $2 million over the next five years to implement, according to the bill’s fiscal note. That number doesn’t include the costs for local election officials.

Some Texans don’t have access to citizenship documents

Research suggests that lack of accessible citizenship documentation could be a more widespread issue than noncitizen voting.

In Texas, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to lack documented proof of citizenship, a 2024 study by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland found. One percent of Republicans do not have it, the researchers found, and 7% cannot easily access their documents, while nearly all Texas Democrats have documented proof, and 4% cannot easily access it.

The study also found that younger Texans are three times more likely to have trouble accessing their documented proof of citizenship than older Texans.

Under the legislation, voters could fulfill the requirement by providing any of the following:

a copy of a U.S. passport;
a passport card;
a certified copy of a birth certificate issued by a U.S. state or territory;
“United States citizenship papers”;
identification issued by the U.S. agency responsible for citizenship and immigration; or
for citizens born outside the U.S., a consular report of birth abroad.

Anyone who shows up to the polls who has yet to provide proof of citizenship will have six days to provide it in order for their full ballot to count. If a voter does not provide it, only the votes in congressional races will be counted.

The list of accepted documents does not include tribal documents, which Arizona does accept. Cecilia Flores, the tribal council chairwoman for the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, which is located in East Texas, asked lawmakers Thursday to include tribal documents in that list. In Arizona, a Votebeat analysis found voters living on tribal land were more likely to wind up on the federal-only voter list, signaling they may struggle to provide citizenship proof.

“While many of our tribal citizens may possess a proper birth certificate, my mother was born in 1928 and I have never seen her birth certificate,” Flores said.

Bucy asked Isaac and other Republicans on the committee to consider amendments to the bill that would expand the type of acceptable IDs and documents.

The House bill was left pending Thursday. The House and Senate must both pass the same version of the legislation, which would then go to Abbott for his signature.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Counties would be banned from mailing out unsolicited voter registration forms under Texas bills

2025-04-25T12:48:52+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Before the 2024 election, two Texas counties mailed out voter registration forms to hundreds of thousands of residents, unsolicited. Only a small share were returned, but the move sparked a backlash from some Republican lawmakers who said the mailings could make it easier for ineligible people to register and cast ballots.

Now, bills moving through the Texas Legislature would bar counties from sending out voter registration forms to people who didn’t request them. It would also bar the state from using public money to support such mailings by other groups.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who sponsored Senate Bill 511, said it would put voter-registration applications under the same restrictions that are already in place for mail-ballot applications. A 2021 Texas law — which faces challenges in federal court — barred election officials from sending out unsolicited mail-ballot applications. State Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Houston-area Republican, filed a bill identical to SB 511 in the House. Both bills have been advanced and could soon reach the floors of their respective chambers.

“The government shouldn’t be putting their thumb on the scale by doing this without a solicitation from the voter,” Bettencourt said, adding that the effort is a “horrible waste of taxpayer money.”

Voting rights groups said the bills could also make it harder to get registration forms in other ways.

In all, three large Texas counties, all Democratic strongholds, moved last year to mail out voter registration applications to residents who were eligible but not yet registered, ahead of the presidential election. In Harris County, the effort quickly stalled following criticism from Bettencourt. Travis and Bexar moved forward, and ran into challenges from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sued to stop the effort. In Bexar County, Paxton’s lawsuit was dismissed. In Travis County, Democratic officials sued Paxton and the state over the attempt, and that case is still moving through the courts.

Bexar County spent $261,000 on the mailing and got back about 15,000 registrations out of them, or 11% of the 136,349 voter registration forms that were mailed out, according to county officials.

That’s well short of the initial goal of 75,000 that county officials discussed. But Bexar County Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, who championed the program, said he would support such an effort again. He said the cost isn’t a waste of taxpayer dollars but instead “an investment in democracy and community outreach.”

“Of those 15,000 newly registered, I think almost 85% of those actually participated. And so to me, it was successful in that regard,” Rodriguez told Votebeat. “You got more people engaged in the process. And that was the goal from the outset.”

Travis County officials declined to comment citing pending litigation.

Bettencourt said the bill does not prevent deputy volunteer voter registrars and candidates from distributing voter registration applications. But some voting rights advocates say language in the bill that says state officials “may not distribute a form on which a person may apply for registration to a person who didn’t request it” is too broad. They say it could have implications for election officials who, for instance, choose to display voter registration application forms on the counter of their elections offices.

“If you are in a voter registration office, you have to say a set of magic words in order to get a voter registration application. You have to specifically request it,” said Emily Eby French, policy director for Common Cause Texas.

If either bill clears both the House and Senate, the proposal will head to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Trump’s executive order on elections is partly blocked by federal court

2025-04-24T18:05:09+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free national newsletter here.

What happened?

A federal judge Thursday issued a preliminary injunction halting some provisions of the sweeping executive order on elections President Donald Trump issued in March.

The injunction blocks his direction to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to take steps to require documented proof of citizenship from people registering to vote, and a provision requiring federal voter registration agencies to “assess” the citizenship of individuals who receive public assistance before providing them a voter registration form.

“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 120-page opinion.

Citing deliberations among the original framers of the Constitution, she wrote: “Executive regulatory authority over federal elections does not appear to have crossed the Framers’ minds.”

Kollar-Kotelly declined to halt some other provisions of the executive order, including one telling the U.S. Justice Department to enforce a ballot receipt date of Election Day against states and ordering the EAC to withhold federal funds from states that do not comply. She said the challenges to those provisions were “premature” or needed to be presented by the states themselves. She noted that states were filing those challenges in separate cases.

What’s the dispute?

The Justice Department argued the order is legal. At a court hearing earlier this month, Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general in the department’s Civil Rights Division, who represented the government at a hearing Thursday, said the provisions of the executive order that are under challenge — including the one concerning a documented proof-of-citizenship requirement — are legal under existing federal laws.

He also argued the plaintiffs hadn’t suffered harm because the government had not yet taken action.

Who are the plaintiffs?

What are they asking for?

The lawsuits by the Democratic and nonprofit groups were filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and assigned to Kollar-Kotelly, who consolidated them. Kollar-Kotelly was nominated in 1997 by former President Bill Clinton. The lawsuits asked her to stop the government from implementing or enforcing the provisions of the executive order under challenge, and, ultimately, to find them unconstitutional.

What happens now?

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the preliminary injunction. In response to a request for comment, a spokesman for the Justice Department said the agency “will continue to fight in court to defend President Trump’s agenda.” The lawsuits remains pending before Kollar-Kotelly.

Read more Votebeat coverage of the executive order on elections:

Update: April 24, 2025, 5:45 p.m.: This story has been updated to include Justice Department comment.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s interim editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Would the SAVE Act disenfranchise married women? A closer look at the claim.

2025-04-21T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

For weeks, we’ve been telling you about the return of the SAVE Act, long-pending federal legislation that would require people to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship before they could register to vote.

That Republican-backed bill passed the U.S. House this month, again, along mostly partisan lines.

The bill would create a new requirement for registering to vote for most Americans. But voting rights watchdogs and other opponents of the legislation are highlighting the potential impact on one group in particular: married women who have changed their names. And these concerns appear to be resonating.

“House Republicans just passed a bill that would disenfranchise 70 million married American women,” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, posted on social media, in one example. “Under the SAVE Act, women who took their spouse’s last name and don’t have an updated passport or birth certificate would be turned away at the polls.”

That’s a far-reaching claim that deserves a closer look.

What is the SAVE Act, and what would it require?

Right now, federal law requires everyone registering to vote to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they are a citizen. Voting by noncitizens is already illegal — punishable by severe criminal penalties, including prison time and loss of residency status — and experts say it’s rare.

Nevertheless, many Republicans and conservatives have argued both that any number of noncitizens casting ballots is too many, and that noncitizens could conceivably vote in large numbers, affecting the outcome of elections. And they’ve pushed for state and federal legislation to tighten access to the ballot through proof-of-citizenship requirements, among other measures.

The SAVE Act passed the U.S. House on April 10 with 220 votes in favor, including four Democrats, and 208 votes against. It faces a difficult path in the U.S. Senate. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed that Democrats will block it, and some Republican senators have said it has little chance of becoming law this session.

The bill would require anyone registering to vote to provide documented proof of citizenship. The text of the legislation mentions U.S. passports or a certified copy of a birth certificate as types of acceptable proof.

What’s behind the concern over married women?

Voting rights advocates point to research showing millions of Americans may not have easy access to such documentation, and say the requirement would potentially disenfranchise many eligible voters.

That includes some 70 million women, according to Ocasio-Cortez’s post. The numbers she cited, which are circulating widely, track with an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress that relies partly on data from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center about the number of married women who have changed their names.

These women have a legal name that differs from the names on their birth certificates, the analysis notes. Voting rights advocates and others say married women, as well as other eligible voters who have changed their names legally, could struggle to provide documented proof of citizenship bearing their current legal names.

What do SAVE Act supporters say about this?

Supporters of the SAVE Act say those concerns are overblown.

In an op-ed published in the conservative online magazine the Federalist this week, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, the Texas Republican who sponsored the legislation, said most people who have changed their name have updated passports or other documentation.

He also pointed to a provision in the bill that “explicitly directs states to establish a process allowing them to register to vote despite a name discrepancy.” That provision directs states to establish a process for applicants who cannot provide documented proof of citizenship to submit other evidence to support their eligibility, or sign an affidavit attesting to their citizenship status.

Proponents of the bill say the other evidence could include documents such as a marriage license or court decree documenting the name change, but opponents say it’s too vague.

In New Hampshire, where a new proof-of-citizenship requirement went into force earlier this year, voting rights watchdogs said some residents attempting to register to vote were stymied when they didn’t have documentation that matched their legal name. It’s unclear how many were affected.

This is an issue we’re continuing to track as more states debate measures to tighten voter registration, and we’re also inviting readers to share their views on the movement to require proof of citizenship for voting.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s interim editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Election officials wary of shift to Texas’ centralized voter-registration system

2025-04-18T09:55:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

An effort to force all of Texas’ 254 counties onto the state’s central system for managing voter registration has some election officials concerned about the system’s history of technical problems, its capacity to handle larger volumes of data, and the potential for new security risks.

Thirty-two Texas counties, including some of the state’s largest, currently use private vendors for software to handle voter registration and election management tasks. The software helps counties manage information including voters’ addresses, voting history, registration applications, images of signatures for verification, images of mail-ballot envelopes, and other personal data.

Pending legislation, Senate Bill 2382, would require counties to exclusively use the state’s system, called Texas Election Administration Management, or TEAM. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, filed the bill after many counties last year faced a surprise surcharge from one of the private vendors, Votec.

Proponents say the bill would give state officials a more detailed picture of how counties manage voter registration. For example, TEAM would allow them to closely monitor the steps that election officials take to remove ineligible voters from their lists, said Christina Adkins, state elections director, during a House Elections Committee hearing last summer.

But relying on a single system would be risky, said Frank Phillips, the elections administrator in Denton County, one of the 32 counties that currently use third-party systems. Those counties are collectively home to roughly 75% of registered voters in the state.

Under the current arrangement, “if something catastrophic were to happen — ransomware, software failure — at least 75% of the voters in Texas would be fine,” Phillips said. If all counties are on the state system and something goes wrong, “the whole state is paralyzed. That’s dangerous.”

Alicia Pierce, the spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the state system is secure, has data backups, and has the necessary capacity. The office is also actively seeking feedback from county election officials on how to improve its functionality, she said.

The bill came up for discussion this week in the Senate State Affairs Committee, the panel that decides the fate of most election-related legislation in the upper chamber. The committee has not yet voted on whether to advance the bill to the full Senate. Bettencourt, the sponsor, did not respond to Votebeat’s request for comment.

Some counties have made the switch

Last year’s surcharge from Votec left many counties scrambling to either find another vendor or come up with more money to avoid an abrupt switch that would have created challenges for administering a smooth primary election. Soon after, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office began urging counties to join TEAM, as the state prepared to launch a revamped version of it.

Since then, at least two large counties, Travis and Hays, have ditched their contracts with private vendors and adopted TEAM. Unlike the outside software vendors, the state doesn’t charge counties to use TEAM, although Hays County has spent $30,000 to store large image files, a feature TEAM currently doesn’t offer. Travis County has spent about $70,000.

Celia Israel, Travis County’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said her office began using TEAM in March in anticipation of the Legislature making it a requirement.

“And ultimately, this is the mothership. This is the database that we all rely upon,” Israel said. She said her staff is better off trying out the new system ahead of a smaller-turnout election in May.

“We haven’t had any issues. It’s been running smoothly,” she said.

Private software already links with TEAM

All private voter registration management software must be approved by the state before counties can use it. The Secretary of State’s Office makes sure all such private products can exchange files with TEAM, which itself runs on software from a private vendor, Civix. The new version of TEAM with added features, also developed by Civix, is scheduled to launch this summer.

At the legislative hearing, representatives of some private software vendors that are approved to work with Texas counties said that they could provide the detailed information the state is seeking.

“They can just indicate when we get recertified on an annual basis that we have to provide that access and information to the state, so they can have real-time information,” said Ben Martin, chief operating officer of VR Systems. The company’s clients include Denton County, which has nearly 650,000 registered voters, and Tarrant County, with more than 1 million.

Most smaller counties already enter their voter registration data directly into TEAM, which was first developed in 2004. At the time, nearly half of Texas’ 254 counties reported that it was slow and did not allow them to “perform their jobs effectively,” according to a 2007 state audit. The state has since revamped it, but some election officials say TEAM remains inconsistent.

For example, they say TEAM can take anywhere from minutes to hours to produce a standard report using election data, such as a list of voters in the county who have requested an absentee ballot. The system can’t produce customized reports that may be needed to, for example, fulfill a detailed public records request. TEAM currently also lacks image storage capabilities that counties use to archive images of voter registration applications, absentee ballot applications, and images of signatures for verification.

In Brazos County, home to College Station, election administrator Trudy Hancock said her staff has used TEAM for years and continually encountered problems while managing records of overseas voters.

Some data often has to be reentered multiple times, she said. In other instances, the system has duplicated records.

“All of that has to be done in a timely manner, but when we’re entering it, saving it, and the system is not taking it, and we delete and try again, it just becomes very time-consuming,” she said. Hancock said she has notified the Secretary of State’s Office of the problem, but it hasn’t been resolved.

Those sorts of issues are why dozens of counties still maintain their own voter registration databases using private vendors. Those counties are required by state law to sync their data daily with TEAM.

State says improvements in the works

Pierce, the Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson, said staff members are assigned to help counties resolve technical problems, and turn to the state’s own software vendor if the problems persist. “With any system, there’s always potential for user error,” Pierce said.

As the state has worked to develop the revamped version of TEAM, Pierce said, the counties have had direct input in the functionalities and features of the upcoming system.

“They have also been testing it and making sure that it’s functioning well,” Pierce said.

But Ed Johnson, a Harris County Republican and a member of the local party ballot security committee, told lawmakers that the large counties that have so far been reluctant to use TEAM have real needs the system doesn’t meet.

He suggested to lawmakers that they find a way for the counties to share any necessary information with the state without requiring the use of TEAM mandatory.

If approved, the bill, as written now, would take effect in September.

Jennifer Doinoff, legislative chair of the Texas Association of Election Officials, told lawmakers Monday that the organization’s members want the chance to test out the state system gradually because of the concerns some election officials have raised.

“Let the state get that system into place first and let the counties that are remaining do it over some time,” Doinoff said.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

What do you think about laws requiring proof of citizenship to vote? Tell us here.

2025-04-16T16:31:02+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

In late March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on elections that included a requirement that Americans prove their citizenship in order to register to vote. While the order is currently the target of several lawsuits, and courts may intervene, it was just the latest move in a nationwide push by Republicans to require proof of citizenship for voting.

Currently, there is no federal requirement to show proof of citizenship in order to vote. Instead, voters across the country must attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. Voting when you’re not a citizen is illegal and comes with significant risks, including prison time and deportation. Noncitizen voting is very rare, and is unlikely to happen in significant enough numbers to affect the outcome of elections.

In recent years, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Louisiana passed laws requiring citizenship proof when registering to vote. Several other states, including Texas and Michigan, are considering bills that would require proof of citizenship at the state level. The SAVE Act, a federal bill in Congress, also includes the requirement. Arizona has already been requiring proof of citizenship for voters for years, but the requirement has had glitches and problems. These state bills, the executive order, and the SAVE Act have different requirements as to which documents would be acceptable as proof of citizenship.

As the United States appears to be moving closer to requiring some form of citizenship proof in order to vote, we want to know what you think about this. Do you have documents proving your citizenship, or know where to get them? What would you use? How would you feel about a requirement in your state or nationally?

Please share your thoughts and questions with us by filling out the form below. (If you don’t see the form below, head to this link.)

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Lauren Aguirre is Votebeat’s engagement editor, focused on connecting people to information they need about voting where they live. She is based in Philadelphia. Contact Lauren at laguirre@votebeat.org.

Los fallos sobre ciudadanía en Arizona generan diferencias en el acceso al voto en todo el estado

2025-04-14T08:50:00+00:00

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En Arizona, los votantes que no han demostrado su ciudadanía enfrentan un trato desigual al intentar actualizar su registro electoral. En ciertos casos, sus inscripciones han sido completamente suspendidas hasta que presenten la documentación correspondiente, según investigó Votebeat.

El trato desigual entre condados se produce porque las autoridades electorales están aplicando de forma distinta los fallos judiciales recientes sobre las leyes estatales que exigen prueba de ciudadanía. Así lo señalaron nueve de las quince oficinas de registro consultadas por Votebeat.

La incertidumbre sobre cómo gestionar los cambios en el registro es el problema más reciente. Surge a raíz de las singulares leyes de Arizona, que exigen a los votantes comprobar su ciudadanía para votar en las elecciones tanto a nivel estatal como local.

La Secretaría de Estado ofreció sugerencias a los funcionarios encargados del registro de votantes sobre cómo aplicar los fallos judiciales, pero no emitió instrucciones obligatorias.

Como respuesta, algunos condados procesan las actualizaciones solicitadas — como cambios de dirección o afiliación política —, pero suspenden el registro electoral del votante. Otros directamente no procesan los cambios, y algunos mantienen los procedimientos anteriores a los fallos judiciales.

El trato desigual podría afectar la participación electoral de algunos votantes el próximo julio, cuando seis condados celebrarán elecciones primarias especiales para cubrir la vacante en el Distrito 7 del Congreso, tras el fallecimiento del representante demócrata Raúl Grijalva el mes pasado.

En la mayoría de los casos, las autoridades electorales informan de inmediato a los votantes que desean actualizar su registro que deben presentar una prueba de ciudadanía. Sin embargo, la suspensión temporal de su derecho al voto depende del condado en el que vivan.

Las disposiciones sobre cómo procesar las solicitudes de actualización del registro afectan tanto a cerca de 35,000 votantes “federales únicamente” — quienes no comprobaron su ciudadanía al registrarse y solo pueden participar en elecciones federales — como a unos 200,000 residentes de larga trayectoria cuyos registros fueron alterados por un error del estado. Para mantener su derecho pleno al voto, deberán presentar una prueba de ciudadanía próximamente.

Las autoridades sostienen que, si bien no han presentado la documentación correspondiente, la mayoría de estas personas son ciudadanas estadounidenses. Un análisis realizado por Votebeat identificó que ciertos grupos, como estudiantes universitarios y personas residentes en territorios indígenas, tienen mayores probabilidades de estar en la lista de votantes “federales únicamente.” Algo que podría deberse a la falta de acceso a los documentos necesarios para comprobar su ciudadanía.

Representantes locales de los grupos defensores del derecho al voto All Voting is Local (Todos los votos son locales) y la Liga de Mujeres Votantes afirman que el trato desigual a los votantes según el condado en el que vivan es ilegal.

“No considero que haya fundamentos legales para eliminar del registro electoral a los votantes federales,” aseguró Alex Gulotta, director en Arizona de All Voting is Local. “Los condados que crean que pueden hacerlo están violando la ley.”

JP Martin, portavoz de la Secretaría de Estado, señaló que la legalidad del trato desigual “es algo que en última instancia deberá decidir un tribunal.”

La Secretaría de Estado emitió lineamientos en diciembre y en febrero, recomendando que los registradores procesen normalmente las actualizaciones de los votantes sin modificar su estatus actual — ya sea el de voto completo para quienes fueron afectados por el error estatal, o el de solo federal para quienes ya figuraban así en el registro electoral. También les indicó que notifiquen a los votantes que deben comprobar su ciudadanía antes de las 7 p.m. del día de la elección, o sólo podrán participar en elecciones federales.

“Confiamos en que cada registrador consulte con su respectivo abogado de condado para garantizar una aplicación uniforme de la ley,” respondió Martin por correo electrónico. “Desde nuestra oficina emitimos lineamientos firmes para asegurar un trato equitativo a los votantes en todo el estado.”

¿Por qué está ocurriendo esto?

Desde 2004, Arizona exige a los votantes presentar una prueba de ciudadanía. Sin embargo, como la ley federal no requiere documentación —aunque sí obliga a declarar la ciudadanía bajo juramento—, quienes no la presentan pueden votar únicamente en elecciones presidenciales y legislativas federales.

Sin embargo, la combinación de leyes, equivocaciones y decisiones judiciales recientes en Arizona ha generado un caos para las oficinas de registro, encargadas de implementar los nuevos requisitos.

La primera resolución judicial significativa llegó en agosto, cuando la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos emitió una suspensión sobre una sección de la ley estatal de ciudadanía electoral aprobada en 2022. Esta suspensión, vigente por ahora, exige que los registradores rechacen los formularios estatales de registro que no presenten la prueba de ciudadanía.

Antes, quienes se inscribían sin presentar prueba de ciudadanía eran incluidos en la lista de “solo federales”. Ahora, sus registros se colocan en una nueva categoría de “no registrados” hasta que presenten dicha documentación. Las autoridades les envían una notificación escrita explicando que su registro no será procesado hasta que cumplan con ese requisito.

La disposición se aplica únicamente a quienes completan el registro mediante el formulario estatal. Aquellos que utilizan el formulario federal sin adjuntar prueba de ciudadanía siguen siendo registrados como votantes “solo federales”.

Al parecer los condados están aplicando un criterio uniforme ante las nuevas solicitudes de registro.

Aunque la Oficina del Secretario de Estado interpretó que el fallo solo aplica a quienes se registran por primera vez, en algunos condados también lo están aplicando a votantes “solo federales” que buscan actualizar su información con el formulario estatal.

En al menos dos condados —Gila y Pinal—, los votantes clasificados como “solo federales” que intentan actualizar sus datos, son clasificados con un nuevo estatus de “no registrados” y no podrán votar hasta presentar la prueba de ciudadanía. Luego, las autoridades del condado les envían una notificación donde indican que deben comprobar su ciudadanía antes de poder votar nuevamente.

Tras la emisión de los fallos judiciales durante el verano pasado, unas 12,450 personas en todo el estado fueron clasificadas con el estatus de “no registradas”, según información obtenida mediante una solicitud de acceso a documentos públicos. Esta cifra incluye tanto a votantes ya registrados que intentaron actualizar sus datos, como a nuevos solicitantes que utilizaron el formulario estatal de inscripción sin adjuntar el comprobante de ciudadanía.

Dana Lewis, registradora del condado de Pinal, aclaró que asignar a una persona el estatus de “no registrada” no implica la cancelación de su inscripción electoral. En caso de que dichos votantes se presenten en las urnas, podrán entregar la documentación que compruebe su ciudadanía hasta las 7 p.m. del día de la elección, y su voto será contabilizado.

Otros condados, entre ellos Navajo, Pima, Yavapai y Yuma, han decidido rechazar o suspender la solicitud de actualización y notificar al votante sobre el inconveniente. No obstante, si una persona intenta modificar su información y la oficina de registro no efectúa el cambio, es probable que su registro electoral contenga datos incorrectos hasta tanto no presente la documentación que compruebe su ciudadanía. Como resultado, la boleta podría no ser enviada a la dirección correcta o el votante podría presentarse en las urnas con una identificación cuya dirección no coincida con la registrada en el registro electoral.

David Lara, registrador del condado de Yuma, expresó que, a su parecer, cada funcionario está tomando las decisiones que considera más apropiadas para su condado, pese a la falta de directrices claras por parte del poder judicial.

“Se dictan normativas que, en ocasiones presentan ambigüedades, lo que deja en manos del registrador la decisión sobre qué es lo más adecuado”, expresó.

Por su parte, los condados de Maricopa — que reúne aproximadamente al 60% del registro electoral del estado — y Coconino mantienen el procesamiento regular de las actualizaciones, sin modificar la categoría de “solo federal” en los registros.

Residentes de larga data afectados por un error del estado

Existe otro fallo judicial emitido en septiembre, que está afectando las solicitudes de actualización de aproximadamente 200,000 votantes involucrados en un error estatal relacionado con la verificación de ciudadanía, que fue dado a conocer este verano. El caso abarca a residentes de larga trayectoria que obtuvieron su licencia de conducir antes de 1996 y se registraron para votar — o realizaron un cambio de condado — en algún momento posterior a 2004.

Un error del sistema electoral provocó que fueran registradas como votantes con derecho a boleta completa, a pesar de no haber presentado nunca un comprobante de ciudadanía. En septiembre, la Corte Suprema de Arizona resolvió que los condados no deben exigir dicha prueba antes de las elecciones de noviembre, permitiéndo así votar con boleta completa. Sin embargo, no se emitieron directrices claras sobre qué hacer con sus registros después de esa fecha.

La situación llevó a los condados a implementar políticas dispares respecto de los plazos para exigir la comprobación de ciudadanía por parte de los votantes. Asimismo, adoptaron criterios distintos sobre cómo proceder con los registros en caso que no se cumpla este requisito antes de la próxima elección y sobre cómo gestionar las actualizaciones mientras tanto.

El condado de Yuma, por ejemplo, está rechazando las solicitudes de actualización, notificando al votante sobre la necesidad de presentar una prueba de ciudadanía y efectuando la modificación únicamente una vez que el votante responde.

En el caso del condado de Pinal, procesan la solicitud de actualización, pero cambia el estatus del votante a “no registrado” y le notifican que debe presentar una prueba de ciudadanía.

Por el momento, el condado de Maricopa está procesando las solicitudes de actualización sin modificaciones y sin informar a los votantes sobre el error. Según la oficina del registro, el plan es comenzar a enviar notificaciones después de las elecciones municipales de mayo en Glendale y Goodyear. Aquellos que no presenten la prueba de ciudadanía antes de las elecciones legislativas de julio serán reclasificados como votantes con registro solo federal.

En los tres condados mencionados hay votantes habilitados a votar en las elecciones congresionales de julio. En los condados de Pinal y Yuma, podrían tener dificultades para recibir su boleta o votar en persona. Por el contrario, no se anticipan problemas para los votantes del condado de Maricopa en el proceso federal.

Organizaciones defensoras del derecho al voto exigen una solución inmediata

Pinny Sheoran, presidenta de la Liga de Mujeres Votantes de Arizona (League of Women Voters of Arizona), advirtió que la desigualdad en el trato a los votantes de cara a la elección especial del Distrito 7 constituye un problema grave.

“Los votantes acudirán a elecciones que consideran importantes y no podrán ejercer su derecho al voto,” dijo Sheoran.

Gulotta describió el panorama actual como “un caos total.”

Afirmó que la Secretaría de Estado cuenta con la autoridad para dictar normas a los condados, lo que permitiría garantizar su aplicación uniforme entre todos los votantes del estado.

“Resulta inadmisible que no se haya proporcionado una orientación clara y que las autoridades electorales locales actúen de manera dispar,” expresó Gulotta.

El representante estatal Alex Kolodin, del Partido Republicano, ha presentado un proyecto de ley orientado a establecer un enfoque uniforme entre los registradores electorales de todo el estado. La iniciativa exige que se solicite con urgencia la prueba de ciudadanía a todos las personas afectadas por el error estatal, y que aquellos que no la presenten antes de las elecciones de noviembre de 2026 sean eliminados del registro electoral.

Kolodin, quien se postula como secretario de Estado, afirmó que el demócrata Adrian Fontes “no ha logrado proporcionar a los condados instrucciones legales que se ajusten a lo dispuesto por la Corte Suprema de Arizona. Lamentablemente, estos errores seguirán repitiéndose si se le permite continuar en el cargo.”

Sin embargo, varios registradores de condado y la Oficina del Secretario de Estado se oponen al proyecto de Kolodin. En una carta dirigida a los registradores, la oficina reiteró que, según la postura de Fontes, estos votantes deben pasar a ser considerados como “solo federales” de no presentar la prueba de ciudadanía, pero sin anular su registro.

Al ser consultado sobre si la Oficina del Secretario de Estado planea tomar medidas adicionales para garantizar un trato equitativo en todo el estado, Martin, portavoz de la oficina, respondió que trabajan junto a los condados para “cumplir con los requisitos de mantenimiento de registros electoral y procesar los registros de votantes conforme a la ley estatal y a la NVRA (Ley Nacional de Registro de Votantes).”

“Ratificamos nuestro compromiso con un trato equitativo a las personas votantes y continuaremos brindando orientación para garantizarlo,” escribió.

Jen Fifield es reportera de Votebeat con base en Arizona. Puedes contactarla en jfifield@votebeat.org.

Justice Department withdraws from Arizona voter citizenship lawsuit

2025-04-10T16:36:18+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

The Trump administration is asking to withdraw from a longstanding court case challenging Arizona’s voter citizenship laws.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion Tuesday to voluntarily dismiss its claims against Arizona in regards to two Republican-backed voter citizenship laws that the Biden administration had argued violated federal law.

The request, in the Mi Familia Vota v. Fontes case, does not affect the pending outcome of the case, which will still continue under several plaintiffs even if the request is granted. But it is the latest example of how the Trump administration’s priorities are reshaping the Justice Department’s approach to voting rights cases to no longer challenge state laws the Biden administration saw as illegally restricting voting. It is also aligned with his recent executive order on elections, which would require documented proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.

State Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, said the Justice Department’s withdrawal “vindicates the legality of, and the need for, Arizona’s election integrity laws.”

Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights for Campaign Legal Center, which is representing many of the groups that sued, including Living United for Change in Arizona and the League of United Latin American Citizens, said that while DOJ’s withdrawal has no practical impact, it demonstrates the new administration’s “complete abandonment of even the most basic voting rights protections.”

The Arizona laws under challenge were signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in 2022, and have been defended mainly by Petersen and other Republican legislative leaders. They would further limit voting in the state by voters who didn’t prove their citizenship, banning them from voting in presidential elections and by mail, along with requiring more comprehensive and frequent voter roll checks for noncitizens.

A coalition of about a dozen voting rights groups sued after the laws were enacted claiming the laws were discriminatory in nature and would disenfranchise citizens. The most substantial parts of the laws have been tied up in litigation since they were enacted.

The voting rights groups who sued had made the same claims as the Biden Justice Department made, the DOJ told the court in its brief, and therefore its withdrawal from the case will not affect the final judgement.

Before this, the latest development in the case came in February when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision to block several provisions of the law, including those that would prohibit voters who don’t prove citizenship from voting for president and by mail.

Petersen said Thursday that he would appeal to the decision to the full 9th Circuit.

“I’m hopeful that the courts will see what the DOJ saw after a fresh look, which is that states do have the power to protect the integrity of its elections by requiring proof of citizenship to vote,” Petersen said.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Arizona voter citizenship rulings lead to disparate treatment for voters across state

2025-04-09T09:00:00+00:00

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Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Arizona voters who haven’t proven their citizenship are being treated differently across the state as they try to update their voter registration, in some cases seeing their registration suspended entirely until they provide proof, Votebeat has found.

The disparate treatment across county lines comes as election officials decide how to comply with recent court rulings on state laws governing proof of citizenship, according to the responses nine out of 15 county recorder offices provided to Votebeat.

The confusion over how to treat these voter updates is the latest complication arising from Arizona’s unique laws, which require voters to document their citizenship in order to vote in state and local elections.

The Secretary of State’s Office gave the recorders, who manage the voter rolls, recommendations on how to comply with the court rulings, but no mandates.

In response, a few counties are processing the requested updates — such as a change of address or political party — but suspending the voters’ registrations, others are not processing the requested updates at all, and still others are processing the updates as they did before the court rulings.

The disparate treatment could affect voters’ ability to cast a ballot as soon as July, when voters from six different counties will head to the polls in a special primary election for the District 7 congressional seat, which became vacant last month when Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat, died.

In most cases, officials are immediately telling voters attempting to update their record that they must provide proof of their citizenship. But whether they immediately lose their right to vote until they provide that proof depends on which county they live in.

The policies on how to respond to voter update requests apply not only to the roughly 35,000 “federal-only” voters in the state who did not provide proof of citizenship when they registered and therefore are only eligible to vote in federal elections, but also to around 200,000 longtime residents caught up in a state error tracking citizenship, who will soon need to provide citizenship proof to keep their full voting rights.

Officials believe the vast majority of these voters are citizens, though they haven’t provided proof. A Votebeat analysis found that certain groups, such as college students and voters living on Native land, are more likely to be on the federal-only list, likely because they don’t have as easy access to documents proving their citizenship.

Local representatives for voting rights groups All Voting is Local and the League of Women Voters say unequal treatment of voters across county lines is illegal.

“I don’t think they have a basis to de-register federal-only voters,” said Alex Gulotta, Arizona director for voting rights organization All Voting is Local. “If there are counties that think they can – they are violating the law.”

JP Martin, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, said whether the disparate treatment is legal “is ultimately for a court to decide.”

The office issued recorders guidance in December and February, recommending that they process these voters’ updates normally and without changing their status, whether it is full-ballot status for the voters caught up in the state error or federal-only status for voters already classified that way. The office directed the recorders to tell voters they need to provide citizenship proof before 7 p.m. Election Day, or they will only be eligible to vote in federal contests.

“We trust that each county recorder confers with their county attorney to maintain consistent application of the law,” Martin wrote in an emailed response to questions. “Our office issues strong guidance to maintain uniform voter treatment statewide.”

Why is this happening?

Arizona has required citizenship proof to vote since 2004. Because federal law doesn’t require documented proof, though voters must attest they are citizens under penalty of perjury, voters who do not provide it are allowed to vote in presidential and congressional races only.

But now, the patchwork of laws, errors, and recent court rulings in Arizona have created a muddle for recorders trying to put the requirements into practice.

The first relevant court ruling was in August, when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay on a portion of a 2022 voter citizenship law. That stay – at least temporarily – requires county recorders to reject new voter registrations if they are filed on a state voter registration form and do not contain proof of citizenship.

Those registrants would have typically been placed on the “federal-only” list. Now, their registration is placed in a new “not registered” status until they provide proof of citizenship, and officials send the voter a letter telling them their registration won’t be processed until they provide the citizenship proof.

This only applies to registrants who use the state form. Voters who use a federal form without providing citizenship proof still go on the federal-only list.

It appears all counties are handling these new registrations the same way.

But while the court ruling was interpreted by the Secretary of State’s Office to apply to new registrants only, some recorders are also applying it to existing federal-only voters trying to update their records using a state form.

In at least two counties, Gila and Pinal, when federal-only voters try to update their record, their registration is placed in the new “not registered” status that prevents them from voting again until they provide citizenship proof. County officials then send a notice to the voter telling them they must prove their citizenship before voting again.

About 12,450 voters across the state have had their registration placed in the new “not registered” status since the court rulings this past summer, information obtained in response to a public records request show. This includes both existing voters who tried to update their records, as well as new voters who tried to register to vote using a state registration form, but without providing citizenship proof.

Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis clarified that placing a voter in this status isn’t the same as cancelling a voter’s registration. If those voters show up at the polls they will be permitted to present the citizenship documentation up until 7 p.m. on Election Day, and their ballot will still count.

Other counties, including Navajo, Pima, Yavapai and Yuma, have decided to reject or suspend the update request and notify the voter of the problem. But if a voter is trying to update information and the recorder doesn’t make the change, the voter record is then likely inaccurate in some way until the voter provides citizenship proof. That means, for example, a ballot might not be sent to the voter’s correct address, or the voter might come to the polls with identification bearing an address that doesn’t match what’s on the voter rolls.

Yuma County Recorder David Lara said he believes every recorder is doing what is best for their county, despite murky direction from judges.

“They throw these things out, and they make them vague sometimes, so it leaves it up to the recorder on what is best,” he said.

Meanwhile, Maricopa County, which contains about 60% of the state’s voters, and Coconino County are processing the updates normally, not changing the voter’s status from federal-only.

Longtime residents caught in state error affected

A separate court ruling, this one from September, is affecting the update requests for a group of about 200,000 voters caught up in a state error announced this summer tracking proof of citizenship. This applies to longtime residents who have had their driver’s license since before 1996, but registered to vote — including moving across county lines — at some point after 2004.

These voters were mistakenly registered as full-ballot voters, even though they have never provided proof of citizenship. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled in September that counties should not require that proof before the November election to vote a full ballot, but didn’t provide specific direction on how to handle their record after that.

This prompted the counties to make different policies about when to require the voters to prove citizenship, what to do with their registration if they do not comply by the next election, and what to do with voter updates in the meantime.

Yuma County, for example, is rejecting the updates, notifying the voter of the need to provide citizenship proof, and not making the update until the voter responds.

Pinal County, on the other hand, is processing the requested update but moving the voters to “not registered,” and notifying the voter of the need to provide citizenship proof.

And Maricopa County has chosen, for now, to process the updates normally and not notify voters of the error yet. The plan is to start notifying voters after the May elections in Glendale and Goodyear, and if they don’t provide citizenship by the July congressional election, they will be moved to federal-only, according to the recorder’s office.

Some voters in all three of these counties will be eligible to vote in the July congressional election. If they are in Pinal or Yuma, they may experience problems receiving a ballot or voting in person. But the Maricopa voters are not expected to have problems voting in the federal election.

Voting rights groups call for immediate solution

Pinny Sheoran, president of the League of Women Voters of Arizona, said the unequal treatment of voters as the District 7 special election approaches is a serious problem.

“The voters are going to show up in elections that matter to them and not be able to vote,” Sheoran said.

Gulotta called the situation a “mess.”

He said the Secretary of State’s Office has the power to issue rules to counties so that rules will be applied evenly to voters across the state.

“It’s outrageous we haven’t given clear guidance, and that local election officials aren’t acting uniformly,” Gulotta said.

State Rep. Alex Kolodin, a Republican, has introduced a bill to try to mandate a uniform approach for recorders across the state and require them all to quickly require proof of citizenship for all voters affected by the state error. It would require the voters affected by the state error to prove citizenship before voting in order to cast a ballot, and mandate that recorders remove them from the rolls entirely if they don’t provide citizenship proof by the November 2026 election.

Kolodin, who is running for secretary of state, said that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, “has failed to provide the counties with lawful instructions that are in keeping with the Arizona Supreme Court’s order, and sadly these failures will continue to occur if he’s allowed to remain in the job.”

But Kolodin’s bill is opposed by some county recorders and the Secretary of State’s Office, which wrote to county recorders reiterating Fontes’ position that these voters should become federal-only voters if they don’t provide citizenship proof, and their registration should not be canceled.

Asked if the Secretary of State’s Office plans to take further action to see that equitable treatment occurs across the state, Martin, the office spokesperson, said that the office partners with counties to “achieve their list maintenance requirements and process voter registrations in line with state law and NVRA.”

“Our commitment to equitable voter treatment remains firm, and we will keep providing guidance to uphold that standard,” he wrote.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Bill requiring voters to show proof of citizenship clears Texas Senate

2025-04-01T22:49:15+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

In a quick vote after little debate, the Texas Senate approved a bill that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering, and would restrict them to voting in congressional races only if they do not.

The bill, a Republican legislative priority, still needs approval in the state House before it can become law. It would cost state officials nearly $2 million over the next five years to implement, according to the bill’s fiscal note, which doesn’t include any costs expected to be borne by local election officials.

Senate Bill 16, written by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, and supported by all Senate Republicans, is modeled after an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, but there are some important differences.

For one thing, it would apply to already registered voters in Texas, rather than just new applicants. It would bar voters who don’t provide citizenship proof from voting in presidential elections, as well as state and local ones — a provision that federal courts have so far blocked in Arizona. And it prescribes new duties for local election officials to continually check the citizenship status of voters on their rolls — with potential felony charges for lapses.

The Republican lawmakers are responding to a nationwide GOP campaign to raise alarm about the threat of noncitizen voting, even though it doesn’t occur in significant numbers.

“Most Texans have already proven their citizenship when they got their driver’s license, but the feds have not allowed us to do this for voter registration. Senate Bill 16 will address that,” Hughes said Tuesday during a Senate floor debate on the bill. Hughes said the process for voters would be “seamless.”

But voting rights advocates say the bill could create a new barrier to voting for Texas’ more than 18 million registered voters, and could diminish the rights of eligible voters who are not able to provide documents proving their U.S. citizenship.

“This is going to upend the way we do elections here in Texas,” Elisabeth MacNamara, advocacy chair for the League of Women Voters of Texas, told Votebeat. “This is a huge burden on voters. It’s also a huge burden on election administrators, and we already don’t over-resource our elections so this is going to make things a whole lot worse.”

If approved by the Legislature, the new law would go into effect in September. Some election officials are concerned that the bill’s requirements will confuse voters.

“It’s not enough time to get everyone familiar with the requirements. We have a primary in March” of 2026, said Jennifer Doinoff, president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials. “It could create a huge influx in provisional ballots.”

Doinoff said election officials across the state are still trying to understand how the bill will be implemented. Among unanswered questions is how the process will work for Texans who vote by mail. In Texas, only elderly voters, people with disabilities, and those who are away from their county on Election Day, including members of the military, can cast ballots by mail. The bill doesn’t address that, she said.

In addition, election officials are asking legislators to consider including a backup option, such as an affidavit voters can sign if they can’t provide proof of citizenship. “We use something similar to that at the polls for voters who can’t provide an ID,” she said.

What the state would need to do to implement the change

If passed, the sweeping bill will require much work and additional resources. It directs the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to, by the end of the year, send all counties lists of already-registered voters who had not provided proof of citizenship prior to September 2025. Election officials would then have to document every effort made to check for such proof.

If they can’t verify that a voter is a U.S. citizen, they would have to notify the person that they are permitted to vote only a “federal limited ballot” unless they can provide proof. A voter who has provided proof before or has been verified as a U.S. citizen wouldn’t have to provide proof when updating or changing their registration information.

According to the bill’s fiscal note, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office would need a modification to the state’s voter registration management system in order to record whether a person has submitted evidence of citizenship, since the system currently isn’t set up to do so.

The state has estimated the cost of that at $578,931 in 2026 and $84,000 per fiscal year thereafter, the fiscal note says.

In addition, the Secretary of State’s Office said it would need two additional staff members to conduct citizenship verification reviews and to coordinate with county voter registrars. The two positions would be paid $70,662 per year, and benefits and other costs for both positions would cost around $45,000 per year. The agency also estimates that the positions would require roughly $16,000 in setup costs in 2026.

The agency declined to comment.

Opponents question why the bill is needed

Last month, during a two-hour public hearing on the bill, more than 200 people signed up to oppose it, and many testified against it. Twenty-six people supported it, including people from across the state who identified as Republicans.

Some Senate Democrats Tuesday pressed Hughes on why the bill was necessary and warned that it would set up the state for legal battles, much as it has in Arizona. Hughes denied that would happen.

In arguing that the bill isn’t necessary, Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Houston Democrat, cited the findings of an investigation by Votebeat, ProPublica, and the Texas Tribune that showed an announcement from Gov. Greg Abbott about noncitizens removed from the state’s voter rolls inflated, and in some cases misstated, the numbers.

Alvarado also said the bill could become cumbersome for local election officials and lead to voter confusion.

Hughes said there would be “plenty of time” to prepare ahead of next year’s elections, and said he believes many Texans have already shown proof of citizenship while obtaining a driver’s license. Election officials will be able to verify others, he said. “So we’re talking about a relatively small group of people,” Hughes said.

Which documents would be accepted as citizenship proof?

Under the legislation, voters could prove their citizenship by providing any of the following:

a copy of a U.S. passport;
a passport card;
a certified copy of a birth certificate issued by a U.S. state or territory;
“United States citizenship papers”;
identification issued by the U.S. agency responsible for citizenship and immigration; or
for citizens born outside the U.S., a consular report of birth abroad.

The list does not include tribal documents, which Arizona does accept. Anyone who shows up to the polls who has yet to provide proof of citizenship will have six days to provide it in order for their full ballot to count. If a voter does not provide it, only the federal races will be counted.

A big part of the bill is new duties and burdens for election officials and others who manage voter registration. Deputy registrars — volunteers who work at voter registration drives — would have to notify people registering to vote that they must present documented proof of citizenship to their local county registrar. In addition to checking for proof themselves, and documenting their efforts, local election officials would have to report the names of voters who have not provided proof to the state attorney general. And they would be subject to potential criminal penalties, including jail time, for knowingly registering an applicant without first verifying that they are citizens.

The provision requiring already registered voters to prove their citizenship could affect voters who registered prior to the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which created voter identification procedures, and the 2005 Real ID Act, which requires people obtaining a state-issued ID or driver’s license to provide proof of citizenship or proof of lawful presence in the U.S.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Longtime Arizona voters receive letters asking for proof of their citizenship

2025-03-31T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Arizona counties are starting to send letters to some longtime voters telling them that they must provide documentation proving their citizenship before they vote again, prompting annoyance and confusion across the state.

Around 200,000 longtime residents, or roughly 5% of the state’s voter roll, will eventually get such letters because they were caught up in a decades-long state error tracking proof of citizenship. Affected voters will need to provide a birth certificate, passport, or other documents proving their citizenship. If they don’t, they’ll eventually be restricted to voting only in federal elections, or be kicked off the voter rolls entirely.

Some of these voters have been registered for decades. That includes 67-year-old Mindy Lively, of Globe in Gila County, who was born in Mesa and said she has voted in state and local elections for more than 40 years.

When Lively, a Democrat, got the letter last month she said she initially figured it was a Republican ploy to kick her off the rolls, in connection with the party’s national campaign against noncitizen voting. But even now, knowing it’s due to a state error, she said she shouldn’t have to go through the trouble of providing the documentation.

“It’s just crazy that they are making me do this,” she said.

Michelle DeMarsh, of Kingman, said she was annoyed when she and her husband received the letters. DeMarsh, 63, has also been a voter in the state for more than four decades. Now, she must request her birth certificate from California and send it in to Mohave County to ensure she can keep voting.

“I think about people in my age group who aren’t well, or don’t have what they need,” she said. “I’ll jump through the hoops, because I’m hell-bent to vote, but I don’t know.”

Here’s what to know about the state error, and what to do if you receive a letter.

What caused this problem?

Since 2004, Arizona has been requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in state and local elections.

Since then, when someone tries to register to vote, county recorders have relied heavily on the applicant’s driver’s license information to check their citizenship status and eligibility to vote.

Only driver’s licenses issued after October 1996 count as proof of citizenship, since that’s when the state started collecting citizenship information for normal driver’s licenses. But for residents with licenses issued before that, the state’s Motor Vehicle Division incorrectly coded them as having already proved their citizenship, when they hadn’t. Based on that information in the license records, the recorders believed that those voters had provided citizenship proof and were eligible to vote a full ballot, rather than just the federal races.

A Gila County voter received this letter telling them that they were one of the voters affected by the state's error tracking proof of citizenship, and asking them to provide proof of citizenship.

Why are residents being asked now to provide the documentation?

State officials announced their discovery of the error last summer.

The Arizona Supreme Court quickly ruled that state and county officials should wait until after the presidential election to address the problem. After the election, some counties waited for clearer guidance from the state on how to approach the affected voters and what to tell them. That’s why counties are just now starting to notify voters that they will need to provide documentation.

After discovering the error, the state was able to find proper documentation for around 20,000 of the affected voters. But that still left 200,000 voters for the counties to contact. Some counties were able to find documentation for some voters before sending out letters to the full list, but others haven’t tried.

Who will get a letter?

Voters on the list are people who meet both of these criteria:

They initially got an Arizona driver’s license before October 1996.
They registered to vote in Arizona at some point after 2004, including after any moves across county lines within Arizona.

Because of those time parameters, all of the voters on the list are at least 46 years old.

Residents who registered to vote before 2004, when the state enacted its law requiring citizenship proof to register to vote, were grandfathered in and do not need to provide citizenship proof unless they have moved across county lines since 2004 and re-registered to vote in their new county.

To find out whether you are on the list of affected voters, visit the state’s voter registration records website. Any affected voter should have their registration flagged.

Are all counties all handling this in the same way?

Counties are alerting the affected voters differently across the state.

Gila, Mohave and Pinal counties, at least, have begun to send out letters to voters. Other counties, including Maricopa County, are waiting until after this year’s local elections, which occur on different dates around the state.

The letters have varying wording and directions for how voters should fix the problem, even though the Secretary of State’s Office provided guidance to the counties on how to communicate with voters. Recorders say their offices are receiving some calls from confused voters.

What happens if these voters don’t provide documentation?

At a certain point, the voters will either be removed from the voter rolls entirely, or limited to vote a federal-only ballot. When that would happen is still unclear.

County attorneys have taken different positions on how to properly address the issue, and a final solution is pending before the Legislature.

What should someone do if they receive the letter?

Voters who receive the letter should arrange to provide proof of citizenship to their county recorder’s office before the next election.

The letter should have instructions on what types of documents are accepted and how to provide documents to the office, along with a phone number to call with questions.

Have you received a letter?

Votebeat wants to hear from voters who receive a letter. If you have received one, please fill out the survey below, and feel free to email jfifield@votebeat.org with questions.

How the debate over proof-of-citizenship laws reopened after decades

2025-03-31T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

It’s 2025. Do you know where your birth certificate is? How about your passport?

If Republican officials get their way, more Americans will need to know the answers to those questions before they could register to vote. And for millions of Americans who don’t have easy access to citizenship documentation, voting rights advocates say, not knowing the answers will cost them that opportunity.

New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Louisiana have already passed laws requiring that anyone registering to vote provide citizenship proof. Many other states, including Michigan and Texas, are considering it. The U.S. House will consider the SAVE Act, federal legislation to require it nationwide, as early as next week.

And this week, President Donald Trump — in an executive order that’s almost certain to face challenges in the courts — asserted his authority to make the proof-of-citizenship requirement the law of the land, almost by presidential fiat.

Republicans around the country, from Trump on down, have been raising alarm for several years about the threat of noncitizens voting in large numbers, even though audits, investigations, and other checks have found almost no evidence that it happens more than rarely. And they’ve leveraged that message to promote proof-of-citizenship law as an urgently needed solution to this vaporous threat. That is, Republicans argue that noncitizen voting, or the potential for it, is a big enough problem to merit an overhaul to the way jurisdictions across the nation handle voter registration — and big enough to justify the risk of disenfranchising eligible voters who can’t easily comply with the requirements.

We’ve had this debate before. Three decades ago, Congress considered allowing states to require proof of citizenship, and it has revisited the issue since. There’s a lengthy record of arguments over whether the benefits of such a requirement would outweigh the burdens it would place on eligible voters, and also on the state and local election officials who would have to administer it.

Until now, Congress has decided the answer is no.

In 1993, a Democratic-controlled Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, designed to make voter registration easier and more uniform from state to state. It was also known as the motor-voter bill, because it established procedures for people to register while simultaneously applying for a driver’s license.

In debating the legislation at the time, Congress considered a provision that would have allowed states to require proof of citizenship if they chose. That provision initially made it into the Senate version of the bill. But then a conference committee ironing out differences between different versions decided that the final legislation shouldn’t include it, because it “would have eviscerated the mail-in registration provisions and stripped the bill of its uniform and nondiscriminatory components,” U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said at the time.

Some House members tried to put it back in, warning about the specter of noncitizen voting. Without a provision explicitly allowing states to require proof of citizenship from people registering to vote, the National Voter Registration Act would be “an invitation to electoral fraud,” declared U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican, according to the Congressional Record. “In fact, it should be called the Illegal Alien Voter Registration Act.”

Under the NVRA, “all any individual in this country, citizen or not, minor or adult, has to do is send in a postcard saying that he is a citizen, that he is of age and that he is qualified to vote,” said U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who pushed hard to give states the citizenship-proof option, “and this bill prohibits any State from requiring any documentation to the contrary,”

But that’s the law Congress passed, ultimately deciding that allowing states to impose a citizenship-proof requirement was not consistent with the aims of the legislation. The NVRA underpins many of the courts’ deliberations and decisions on the requirements for voter registration, and since its passage, at least some judges have noted the clarity of the congressional record when weighing attempts to require some form of proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.

The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to register eligible voters across the country, was among the groups lobbying against the provision at the time. CEO Celina Stewart said one of the pens President Bill Clinton used to sign the NVRA still hangs in the group’s offices. After Trump’s executive order this week, she said she’s “disheartened that we still have to talk about it in 2025.”

The fact that we are talking about it again, though, suggests that the question of whether proof-of-citizenship requirement is an unreasonable barrier to voter registration is still an unsettled issue. And Trump’s decision to put a proof-of-citizenship requirement in his executive order suggests that he’s determined to get this done, even if the SAVE Act isn’t able to clear hurdles in the Senate.

Stewart said she does not believe that Trump can require proof of citizenship via executive order, or that the SAVE Act is the right way to ensure that only eligible voters can cast ballots. If lawmakers want to ensure clean voter rolls or deter fraud, she said, they need to “go back to the drawing table and figure out a bipartisan way to get that done.”

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s interim editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

New Hampshire election offers preview of barriers posed by SAVE Act

2025-03-24T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

New Hampshire this month held its first elections since it began requiring documented proof of citizenship to register to vote, and some people who tried to register to vote couldn’t do so.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said he doesn’t have data on how many people couldn’t register for lack of documentation, “but clearly there were some.”

“What I learned from this is, the administration of this law is doable,” Scanlan said, “but based on the number of individuals that were turned away to get further documentation, we know that we have a lot more work to do to prepare the voting population before the next round of state elections, which would be in 2026.”

Voters and election officials around the country should pay close attention to how this new requirement affects voters in New Hampshire, because one way or another, they could be contending with similar requirements before long.

Congress is expected soon to again take up the SAVE Act, Republican-backed legislation that would require anyone registering to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration.

Proponents say that is a necessary precaution to make sure only citizens are voting in federal elections. But voting rights advocates and many experts are fiercely opposing it, warning that it would potentially disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, create high barriers even for those who are able to comply, and undermine voter registration. Noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare, and voters must already attest they are citizens when registering, under the penalty of perjury.

Election officials also warn that such legislation creates new administrative burdens that could prove difficult to meet. In a letter raising concerns about the SAVE Act sent March 11, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican, said its requirement that people who register by mail provide proof of citizenship in person at the county elections office “will prove unworkable amidst the tight timelines and strained resources faced by our local officials.”

Both opponents and proponents acknowledge that the SAVE Act faces a difficult path to becoming law through the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles. But 19 states are also considering passing new proof of citizenship requirements, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks state-level legislation on voting and elections, and at least some of those bills are more likely to become law.

Millions of Americans “just don’t have ready access to the kinds of documentation that the SAVE Act and many of these proposals are going to require for voting and registering to vote,” such as a birth certificate or passport, said Jasleen Singh, counsel in the democracy program at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.

Arizona is the only state that has long enforced a proof of citizenship requirement, and Arizona citizens who don’t provide it cannot vote in state and local elections, though the state must permit them to vote in federal races.

It’s a different story in New Hampshire, which is one of six states not subject to the National Voter Registration Act. (Wyoming, where legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register just became law, is another.)

That asterisk effectively means people who aren’t able to provide citizenship documentation in New Hampshire can’t register to vote at all. The elections earlier this month were local ones in many of the state’s towns, and such elections typically have lower turnout, Scanlan said. When it’s time for higher-turnout general elections, many more people would likely struggle to register.

The New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights had observers in 22 different voting locations who reported seeing 58 people who didn’t have sufficient documentation to register, at least initially, said McKenzie Taylor, the group’s campaign director. Local media also reported voters struggling to meet the requirements, sometimes making multiple trips to retrieve documentation.

Taylor noted that her group’s number includes at least four people who had proof of citizenship documentation such as a birth certificate, but whose current name didn’t match the name on the documents — something advocates have warned could become a big issue under the SAVE Act for people who have changed their names.

In such cases, New Hampshire requires additional documentation of the person’s legal name change, such as a marriage certificate or court order.

An estimated 357,000 citizens have legally changed their name in New Hampshire, an analysis of data from the U.S. Census and the Pew Research Center by the Voting Rights Lab found. In some states considering proof of citizenship requirements, that number is far higher. In Texas, for example, where legislation would require documentation not just from anyone registering to vote but from 18.6 million already-registered voters, that number is an estimated 6 million. In Michigan, it’s estimated at more than 2.3 million.

There are other issues, too. Scanlan said the state Legislature is considering a bill that would allow him to use resources to help people obtain needed documentation. That’s easier if people were born in New Hampshire and their birth certificate is on file with the state. But more than half the state’s residents were born elsewhere.

Scanlan said this election showed many people weren’t aware of the new registration requirements, and said election officials will have to look beyond traditional media outlets and official websites and social media accounts to inform people.

There are at least two lawsuits challenging the New Hampshire law, including one from the ACLU that argues it violates the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution. So far, the law remains in place — and anyone who wants to register to vote there will have to reckon with it.

This election showed everyone might not be able to do so.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s interim editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, a public ‘battle’ for control of elections

2025-02-27T20:47:05+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Maricopa County’s new recorder is rejecting an agreement that splits control of the county’s elections between his office and supervisors, and is threatening to sue the supervisors if they don’t give him more power.

Recorder Justin Heap’s protest puts control over elections in the state’s most populous and high-profile swing county up in the air and sets up a messy fight between prominent Republican officials that could affect voters, with local elections approaching in May and the 2026 gubernatorial election looming.

Heap, a former state representative, is seeking more staff for the recorder’s office and more control over early voting. He claimed in a news release this week that the previous board of supervisors took this away from his office in a “backroom, eleventh hour power grab,” referring to a shared-services agreement they approved shortly before he took office.

He said the new supervisors’ refusal to quickly meet to discuss a new agreement is “jeopardizing Maricopa County election readiness.”

Supervisors Chairman Thomas Galvin rebutted Heap’s claims in his own news release, saying that “conversations have been happening for weeks,” and that supervisors look forward to working with Heap on a new agreement.

Pressure is on to run smooth and accurate elections after false claims and real problems over the last four years damaged voter trust in Maricopa County. But because of the way Arizona law splits duties between the recorder and supervisors, Heap will need to collaborate with the supervisors to make that happen. The hostile start to their relationship points to the challenges.

The officials will need to reach consensus before April, when the county must send out ballots for Glendale’s and Goodyear’s all-mail elections.

Matt Salmon, a Republican former congressman who is now on the leadership team of the Democracy Defense Project, said Heap won’t be able to win the supervisors’ support — or instill confidence in voters — by being combative.

“The most important thing is that our democracy, our republic works,” Salmon said. “The people are sending folks to the county board of supervisors, and they are sending a representative to the recorder’s office, and they expect them to work together.”

Heap calls October agreement a ‘power grab’

Former Recorder Stephen Richer signed the latest agreement with the board in October — after Heap had defeated Richer in the Republican primary but before Heap won the November election.

In rejecting the agreement, Heap is continuing the aggressive tone of his campaign, in which he called the county’s elections a “laughingstock.” As a candidate, he expressed doubt over the fairness of past election results and promised voters that he would upend the election system, even though recorders in Arizona generally don’t control most of the county’s election operations.

Recorders typically oversee voter registration and early voting, while supervisors hire election directors to handle Election Day voting and ballot counting.

The supervisors, too, have said they want to improve the county’s elections. On Wednesday, they voted unanimously to set aside $480,000 for two independent audits to examine the processes and technology used to run elections. Galvin said Heap told him his office will participate.

Maricopa County supervisors have been slowly taking back control of elections from the recorder’s office over the past decade or so.

The past two recorders, Richer and Adrian Fontes — now the secretary of state — argued with supervisors over how best to divide up duties, but almost always behind closed doors. Heap’s public criticism marks a significant turn from that united front.

“There are people who work to get stuff done, and there are people who just like fighting,” Richer said in a statement. “You can get away with the latter personality type when you’re in the state Legislature, city council, or the Congress, and you’re not actually responsible for anything other than your own vote. It’s harder to survive like that when you have to run things.”

The current supervisors and Heap started out cordially. During a public budget session last month, they sat together around a table and tried to work out a key point of disagreement: who should manage the county’s election-related IT staff.

At that meeting, Heap said he hoped to audit and improve the county’s voter registration system, and needed more people and money to do that. Galvin responded that having election IT staff for both the recorder and supervisors would be redundant and more costly.

But shortly after the meeting, state lawmakers who are part of the Freedom Caucus in the Legislature began to publicly criticize Galvin, saying he was “railroading” Heap, a former caucus member, and stripping him of his budget and power.

Heap then sent out his news release on Monday and posted on social media that he was in a “BATTLE OVER MARICOPA COUNTY ELECTIONS” with supervisors.

“I don’t see this as a ‘battle,’” Galvin responded in his release.

Disagreement about what the October agreement says

Heap and the supervisors disagree not only on who should control what election functions, but also on what the October agreement says about that.

All sides agree that the October agreement shifted control of the elections IT staff and a key election database from the recorder to the supervisors. Heap wants that database, and the majority of the staff, shifted back.

But Heap also claims that the October agreement took from the recorder’s office crucial early voting processes such as sending out and receiving mail ballots. Galvin disputes that.

Heap said that after consulting with the County Attorney’s Office, he notified supervisors in January that he was rejecting the agreement, citing “a standing principle” of Arizona law that “no elected body or office may bind the powers of a future body or office.”

After that, Heap and the supervisors both hired outside lawyers to advise them on the agreement.

It’s unclear whether supervisors accept that Heap can cancel the agreement, or what happens if they don’t approve a new one. A spokesperson did not directly answer that question. But Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee said in an interview that she believes Heap’s decision doesn’t change anything yet, since the October agreement says any termination would take effect only after the next general election. That would mean it stays in place through the end of 2026.

Heap has said he won’t let that happen.

“With an election less than 90 days away,” Heap said in his release, “the Supervisors’ unwillingness to address these concerns will force me to take legal action against the Board to restore this office’s full authority, and deliver the results voters elected me to achieve.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Pennsylvania’s upgrade of glitchy voter registration system falls further behind schedule

2025-01-30T11:00:01+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

More than a year after the Pennsylvania Department of State canceled a contract to upgrade the state’s voter registration system, there’s still no replacement contract in place.

The state has been trying since 2019 to upgrade the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, a database of the state’s voters that was built in the early 2000s and still undergirds many of the functions of running elections.

Local election officials complain that the system is outdated, has a tendency to crash, and requires complex workarounds for some processes.

State officials had hoped to have a replacement contract for the upgrade in place months ago, but have not said what is holding it up.

Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt told state lawmakers in March 2024 that the department would release a new request for proposals in the spring, select a vendor by summer, and have a contract in place by the fall. The department did release its request for proposals in late May, and bids were due in August, but it hasn’t yet announced the new vendor or finalized a contract.

Matt Heckel, a spokesperson for the department, said the upgrade contract was in “active procurement” and that rules governing procurement prevented the department from saying more. Heckel did not address a question about Schmidt’s March testimony or say whether there was an updated timeline for finalizing a contract.

“That said, we feel confident we will have the new system fully operational by the 2028 primary election, if not before,” Heckel said.

Upgrade effort started over five years ago

SURE is a crucial tool election officials use to add, remove, or update the status of every voter in the state. County election offices rely on it to check voter registrations, manage mail ballots, and generate the poll books used in every election to check in voters at precincts.

Pennsylvania began using SURE in 2003, a year after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act requiring states to create centralized voter registries. Before that, voter rolls were often created and maintained by individual counties.

The department initially sought bids to replace SURE in 2019, and in December 2020 it signed a $10.7 million contract with South Dakota-based elections software company BPro Inc.

The project was scheduled to wrap up by early 2023, so that the new system would be in place for the 2024 presidential election. But delays pushed the projected rollout into this year. In December 2023, the company and the Department of State agreed to cancel the contract, the department said, after it concluded that the company “will not meet those timelines and contractual standards,” according to an email sent to counties at the time.

The prior contract set a 743-day timeline for developing, testing, and launching the new system, so if a new contract is signed soon with a similar timeline, the projected completion date would be in early 2027.

Local election officials who spoke with Votebeat and Spotlight PA said they’ve been told the department is still working on details of a new contract, and they believe they will be using SURE at least through the 2026 election.

They’re well acquainted with SURE’s pitfalls. Mercer County elections director Thad Hall pointed out that the system had a daylong outage in the period leading up the November 2022 election. He also said the design isn’t user-friendly, pointing to a complex, multistep system for processing mail ballot applications. Since voting early in Pennsylvania requires casting a mail ballot in person, that can lead to delays for voters.

Devin Rhoads, the Snyder County election director, estimated that each application for a mail ballot takes 10 to 15 minutes to process.

“That creates a big backlog, so either the SURE system needs to be fixed or we need real early voting,” Hall said. He added that political parties encouraged their voters to vote early before the 2024 election, fueling demand. Election workers, he said, felt “crushed.”

In preparation for the 2024 election, the Department of State began upgrading parts of the current system by replacing the terminals that connect counties to the centralized system, hoping to avoid the types of outages seen in 2022. The state largely avoided such issues in 2024, other than a 90-minute outage in October.

Hall said those upgrades helped, but “there’s only so much they can do” to fix the current system.

“It’s not designed in a modern way,” he said. “Fixing the things you think are simple are not, because of the way it’s coded.”

Two parts to the system

Sean Drasher, elections director in Lebanon County, stressed that while the system is old, that doesn’t mean it’s not secure. He drew a distinction between the data in the SURE system — which only election officials can access, and which they keep updated year-round — and the interface election workers use to access that data, which is the part that needs fixing.

It is not intuitively designed, he said, and it can be difficult for election workers to do simple tasks like register new voters or pull the types of reports they need to do their jobs.

“I think some big thinkers on the project need to take a step back and say ‘OK, we have all this data. It’s secure. Now we need to make an interface that is easy for the end users,’” he said. “You shouldn’t have to be trained in database queries to get what you want.”

Drasher and Hall separately told Votebeat that they felt the Department of State was moving in the right direction to ensure the next version of the project was successful, highlighting the hiring of a chief modernization officer and a project manager.

Drasher likened the effort to an office upgrade project that has been underway in Lebanon County for several years, which has been delayed because of complications coordinating between multiple parts of government and unforeseen developments, such as a discovery of asbestos.

Projects that touch multiple levels of government and deal with critical processes, like the SURE project does, can be complicated in unforeseeable ways, he said.

“There are all these pieces and they can’t mess it up,” he said, adding, “Hopefully it will be in place by the next presidential election.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Electronic pollbook decertification in Texas leaves counties scrambling for solutions

2025-01-28T10:55:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

With city and school elections just a few months away, election officials in more than 60 Texas counties are scrambling to replace a key piece of voting equipment that’s no longer in service: the electronic pollbooks they use to check voters in at the polls.

The state decertified widely used pollbook software from voting machine company Election Systems & Software in December after several thousand voters in Dallas County received the wrong ballot during the November presidential election, a problem local officials attributed to glitches with the e-pollbook.

Now county officials have to decide whether to wait to see if ES&S’s updated software is certified in time to prepare for the May elections, or choose a different certified vendor, which could be expensive. They must also consider whether any new option would be compatible with their existing systems and whether they have enough time to train poll workers to use it.

The state tests all certified election equipment extensively, but that hasn’t included how well e-pollbooks function in elections with high voter turnout. Now the state plans to revise its certification standards and add testing to include whether the devices can function error-free over extensive periods during those conditions, said Alicia Pierce, assistant secretary of state for communications at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

State officials have offered grants to affected counties to offset some of the cost of switching to a new vendor, but some county officials say they won’t be enough.

ES&S, meanwhile, says it is working on an update that fixes the problems, but that update would still have to go through the weeks-long state certification process, and election officials are worried it won’t be ready on time.

The electronic pollbook — basically a laptop computer or tablet loaded with specific software — is an essential tool for running elections securely and efficiently in Texas. Election workers use them to verify voters’ identity, check their registration, and guard against fraud by checking whether a voter has already cast a ballot by mail or at another polling location. Without the e-pollbook, election workers would have to flip through hundreds or thousands of pages of paper voter lists.

Trying to run an election without them “would be really challenging,” said Christopher Lynch, the elections administrator in North Texas’ Rockwall County, which has nearly 90,000 registered voters. “We wouldn’t have the ability to execute elections the way we’re used to doing it.”

State cites 10 areas where e-pollbooks failed

Running an election with a poorly functioning e-pollbook can create a mess, too.

The electronic pollbooks are synced with the voter rolls. Once a voter checks in at a polling location, election officials use them to determine which version of the ballot the voter is supposed to receive, with the selection of local races that corresponds to their address.

The ballot-assigning function is one of 10 that the ES&S electronic pollbook “failed” to perform properly during the November presidential election, according to officials with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. Votebeat obtained a copy of a December letter from the state to ES&S detailing those lapses.

The system also failed to keep a running count of voters who had checked in to vote each day and failed to sync with counties’ central databases in real time, the state said. The company in an email said new features in its upcoming updated version will resolve these issues.

The state also told ES&S in the letter that it had received “reports from multiple counties” related to issues with the e-pollbook, though it didn’t identify them. Three counties — Rockwall, Victoria in South Texas, and Angelina in East Texas — had problems in November, though on a much smaller scale than Dallas.

“These issues included electronic poll books becoming unresponsive, errors that caused some voters to receive incorrect ballot styles, failure to save check-in data for certain voters and a general failure to provide notification to poll workers of errors in workflows or with peripheral devices,” the letter said.

Texas has tested and certified versions of ES&S’s e-pollbook since 2020, most recently in August, just a few months before the November problems.

The certification process includes testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology lab, physical examination of the devices, and what’s called a functional examination, where state officials put the devices through a test of specific functions, using a database of fictional test voters. Officials then test whether the equipment is able to check a voter’s identity, by scanning various forms of ID; whether it can import and export the county’s voter registration data; and whether it can determine if a voter is at the correct polling location, among other things.

Dallas County problems unnerve election administrator

The problems in Dallas County unfolded like this: Once voters checked in, poll workers would use the system to check their identity and determine which ballot style they should get. The voter would then enter their signature, and the poll workers would hit the “accept” button, which triggers the system to begin printing their ballot. But the system didn’t notify the poll worker that printing was in progress, prompting workers to hit the “accept” button multiple times. Each time, the system added another copy of that type of ballot to the printing queue.

As more voters came in, they were then handed the ballot that had been mistakenly added to the queue and printed for the voter ahead of them.

ES&S said the issue was due to the slow transitions between pages when the print command is used, and appears to be isolated to this pollbook version. “Our records indicate that the November 2024 election was the first time this particular issue was reported,” a company spokesperson said in an email to Votebeat.

“We take full responsibility for the usability of the system and the confusion which resulted in voters being given the wrong ballot,” Jeb Cameron, ES&S senior vice president of government affairs, told Votebeat. But he stressed that the ES&S system did not assign incorrect ballot styles to voters and that poll workers have a way to check the ballot style before handing it to a voter.

Dallas County elections administrator Heider Garcia said no amount of additional poll worker training could have fully prevented the problem.

“This is a defect in the software. There’s no getting around that,” he said. “You can train people to expect issues. But if you’re training them on how to deal with an issue, the question is, why are you not fixing the issue in the first place?”

ES&S added a temporary fix to resolve the problems that occurred in Dallas County: a pop-up screen giving the poll worker the option to activate the printing.

Company officials said they are now working on an updated version that would eliminate the problems and expect to complete it and submit it for certification to the state by March 3. The company said it “will work closely with the state to obtain certification as timely as possible.”

Garcia said it’s too risky to count on ES&S’s update, and he’s taking bids from other vendors.

Other counties may not be able to afford that. The state has offered grants drawn from federal dollars meant to help states upgrade their voting systems. State officials said those funds would cover 80% of costs. Counties could also dip into state funds allocated to cover local voter registration-related expenses.

In Rockwall County, officials had been using the ES&S equipment for about two years and had already spent more than $50,000 on it.

If the equipment isn’t recertified, and the county isn’t able to use it, that money could go to waste.

Lynch, the elections administrator there, said that he is exploring all of his options and preparing for the possibility that the county may have to rely on spreadsheets or printed voter lists in May.

“We just don’t know what’s going to happen and that’s what makes me nervous,” he said. “But we also can’t wait to see what happens. We have to get creative and be ready.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Texas Republicans want voters to provide proof of citizenship. Arizona’s law holds lessons.

2024-12-19T10:55:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Republicans are making a big push for legislation requiring Texans to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, and key lawmakers are signaling that they’ll make it a priority next year.

The push is part of a national effort by the GOP and conservative allies who assert that such legislation is needed to stop noncitizens from illegally casting ballots, even though such cases are already very rare.

Texas Republican lawmakers have filed at least five bills so far ahead of the legislative session opening in January. It’s too early to tell which ones could get traction when the session starts. Some of the bills appear to be modeled after federal legislation considered earlier this year by the U.S. Congress, where the measure passed the House but stalled in the Senate. At least one calls for placing a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot next year for voters to consider. Others mirror a law adopted 20 years ago in Arizona, the only state that currently enforces a proof of citizenship requirement for voters.

Because of conflicts between Arizona’s law and federal voting rights laws, Arizona maintains a split voter roll, with a small percentage of residents who haven’t provided proof of citizenship and are allowed to cast ballots only in federal elections. The makeup of the “federal only” list shows how certain demographic groups — including Native voters and young people — are at greater risk of being disenfranchised over citizenship documentation requirements, a Votebeat analysis has found.

If Texas were to adopt a similar system, experts say, it could also potentially disenfranchise citizens, because research has found that millions of Americans — for various reasons — do not have access to documents that prove their citizenship.

And, as in Arizona, such a law could impose new administrative burdens for election officials who would need additional training and resources in order to comply.

“This will be something that affects you if you’re young, if you’re old, if you’re Republican, if you’re Democrat, it really doesn’t matter,” said Jasleen Singh, legal counsel for the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a voting rights nonprofit that has studied the potential effects of requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. State lawmakers are putting “millions of people at risk of not being able to meet those requirements,” Singh said.

The effects of Arizona’s citizenship proof law

Under federal law, all U.S. voters must attest to their citizenship to register, but they do not need to prove it. Voter registrars in counties across the country have processes in place to check that only eligible citizens make it onto the voter rolls.

Experts say noncitizen voting cases are rare and there is no evidence that they have affected election outcomes. Voting leaves an extensive paper trail, and noncitizens who illegally cast ballots face criminal penalties, including the loss of their residency status and deportation.

Arizona’s law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote was passed in 2004, and prompted lengthy legal fights that continue even now. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizona must allow residents who do not provide such proof to cast ballots in federal elections. That ruling led to the current split system with the “federal only” voter list.

In Arizona, “federal only” voters make up less than 1% of the state’s voter roll — or 34,933 out of around 4.4 million active voters eligible for this past November election. A Votebeat analysis found that the list includes disproportionately high numbers of voters who live on Native land, on college campuses, and at the state’s main homeless campus. Such voters also were generally younger than the voting-age population in the state, and were less likely to vote this past November than voters who had provided proof of citizenship, the analysis found.

Arizona has struggled to maintain the lists accurately. Officials discovered this summer that for decades, the state has been labeling some voters as having provided proof of U.S. citizenship, when in fact they had never been asked to do so. The confusion stemmed from the fact that some Arizonans who obtained drivers licenses before 1996 were exempted from the requirement. The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office estimated that around 218,000 voters were affected.

Twenty years after it was enacted, Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement remains the only one in the country that is actively enforced. But conservative activists and Republicans around the country have been rallying support for more such laws by raising alarms about the risk of noncitizen voting.

It’s a politically savvy move, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “Republicans can say they are tough on immigration, border security and illegal voting, too.”

In Texas this summer, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a press release boasting that the state had removed more than potential 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls. An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and Votebeat found the governor’s figure was likely inflated and, in some cases, wrong.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the federal government in October, claiming the Department of Homeland Security has refused to help the state check the citizenship status of some registered voters. The federal agency offers states access to a database that can be used to verify immigration status, but Paxton argued it’s inadequate and requires a fee for each verification.

What the Texas bills call for

The five bills filed in Texas so far vary in their details.

Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican from northeast Texas, first introduced a bill requiring proof of citizenship during the 2023 legislative session. The bill was approved by the Senate, but never got a hearing in the House. In a bill analysis, Hughes cited the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed Arizona to move forward and called for a similar system. He has now reintroduced the same bill as Senate Bill 309, which would task the Texas Secretary of State with crafting a process and rules to require voters to submit proof of citizenship to the registrar. Hughes did not respond to requests for comment.

At a legislative hearing in October, Hughes said the legislation is a major priority. “We need to get it done,” he said.

A blank voter registration card at the Nueces County Courthouse on Wed., Sept. 11, 2024 in Corpus Christi, Texas.

In the Texas House of Representatives, House Bill 892, filed by Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from East Texas, mirrors some of the requirements in place in Arizona and also some from the federal SAVE Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, and pending in Congress. The Cain legislation would require voters to present one of the following: a certified copy of a U.S. birth certificate; a U.S. passport or passport card; a naturalization certificate; or a consular report of birth abroad issued by the U.S. State Department.

Cain’s bill would also allow volunteer deputy registrars — who conduct voter registration outreach at community events and college campuses but aren’t employed by counties — to check for proof of citizenship.

Cain’s bill would have to pass the state Legislature and then be approved by voters next year. Arizona’s law was also created through a ballot proposition. Cain did not respond to requests for comment.

Rep. Brooks Landgraf, a Republican from West Texas, filed House Bill 219. In addition to birth certificates, passports, and naturalization certificates, Landgraf’s bill would allow voters to provide a Texas driver’s license or a state ID. The bill also requires voter registrars to follow up with the voter to ensure they provide the required documentation if the application was mailed or faxed. Landgraf could not be reached for comment.

None of the bills that identify a list of acceptable documents include tribal documents, which Arizona does accept. The legislators did not respond to Votebeat’s questions about whether they would consider including them.

Arizona law took years to straighten out

Experts warn that a proof of citizenship requirement could have unintended consequences for voters and election officials, and must be crafted carefully.

Tammy Patrick, who was the elections administrator in Arizona’s Maricopa County from 2003 to 2014, said it took election officials years to effectively implement the proof of citizenship requirement there. There were hours of additional training for election workers and money spent on voter education outreach so voters could be aware of the new rules, among other things.

A lot of time and resources were also spent on verifying voters’ information, Patrick said.

Initially, the law required naturalized voters to provide a number from their naturalization certificates to verify their citizenship status. But officials later found the number the law asked for could not be used to verify that information. The law also wasn’t clear on whether officials could accept an expired U.S. passport as proof of citizenship, Patrick said.

Over time, the law had to be updated to clarify which documents could be accepted.

Election officials must also verify voters’ information and compare it to state and federal data to check citizenship status. That information wasn’t always up to date or accurate, Patrick said.

In some instances, longtime voters who’d never missed their opportunity to cast their ballot found that when they moved from one county to another, they had to re-register but didn’t have the documents they needed to provide proof of citizenship.

“People think it sounds easy. It sounds like it makes sense. Why wouldn’t you have to prove your citizenship, right?” said Patrick, who is now the CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “But there are details in the implementation that get very messy very quickly.”

In Texas, some voter registrars have a lot of questions about how implementing this requirement would work in their offices and what exactly would be required of voters.

Chris Davis, the voter registration division director in Travis County, home to Austin, says lawmakers should consider how these rules would work in tandem with requirements officials already have to follow.

If election officials are tasked with verifying citizenship, that’ll likely require an update of training materials for election workers, Davis said.

“Then there’s the responsibility (and) liability that you’re putting on volunteer deputy registrars, if they are part of the process … Are they the ones that get to handle those documents?” Davis said. “It just doesn’t work in terms of, who’d want to entrust a passport or a birth certificate to a VDR? These are very, very precious documents.”

If such documentation has to be stored as part of the voters’ record, he said, it will become public information and will have to be redacted before being released publicly, which will also take time and likely additional workers. None of these steps would be as easy to pull off in smaller counties already short on funds, he said.

“The legislature should really think this through in terms of unintended consequences and in ensuring security of these documents and in understanding the time that’s going to be required to process these,” Davis said.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Maricopa County restores around 2,000 voters after incorrectly demanding proof of citizenship

2024-11-04T01:23:22+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Maricopa County incorrectly flagged around 2,000 longtime registered voters as needing to provide proof of citizenship in order to vote in Tuesday’s election, county officials confirmed Sunday.

That number is in addition to nearly 900 Pinal County voters who were incorrectly told the same thing, which Votebeat first reported Saturday.

The voters who were incorrectly asked for the information will no longer need to provide proof of citizenship before 7 p.m. Tuesday in order to cast ballots in this election, as some number of them were initially told, according to officials in both counties.

If voters had already attempted to vote an early ballot and had the ballot put on hold or voided, those ballots will now be counted. Voters who had not yet cast their ballots should not have an issue when they go to vote.

That means these voters will have the chance to help determine the result of elections in this divided swing state, where close margins are expected from the presidential race to statewide ballot propositions.

Maricopa County had moved the voters to “not registered status,” which meant that they were no longer on the active voter rolls, according to couty Recorder’s Office spokesperson Taylor Kinnerup. If any of those voters cast an early ballot, it appears that the county initially voided their ballots. Officials have since worked to “restore any ballots that were voided ... and those votes have since moved forward,” Kinnerup said.

Pinal County demanded proof of citizenship for 900 voters, then backtracked

Officials restored the voters’ status on Oct. 21, Kinnerup said. She did not respond to a question about why the office changed course.

After learning of the issue in Pinal County, Votebeat reached out to the state’s largest counties, including Maricopa, to check whether incorrect information had been conveyed to voters there as well.

Besides Maricopa and Pinal counties, it’s unclear whether other counties incorrectly flagged voters’ registrations, and if any voters will have trouble voting Tuesday because of it. Pima, Yavapai, and Coconino, the three other counties that have so far responded to inquiries, all said they did not incorrectly flag voters in their systems.

The problem stems from two recent court decisions related to proof of citizenship requirements in the state.

The voters who were affected had tried to update their voter registration just before the Oct. 7 voter registration deadline. The county had flagged these registrations because of changes the county made to the way it was processing voter registration forms in response to two separate court decisions, both regarding requirements in state law for voter proof of citizenship.

Arizona has a unique law that requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections. Federal law requires applicants only to attest to their citizenship to vote. If an Arizona applicant doesn’t provide proof of citizenship, they are placed on a “federal only” voter list and are restricted to voting in federal contests like presidential and congressional races.

In the first recent court decision related to the state’s laws on proof of citizenship, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Aug. 22 that county recorders should completely reject voter registration forms from voters if they register using a state form and don’t provide proof of citizenship. Previously, these voters would have been registered as federal-only voters. The ruling is in effect until the courts can fully consider the case.

The second court decision came after the state realized that a problem with the Motor Vehicle Division database had allowed about 218,000 longtime driver’s license holders to become full ballot voters, even though they had not provided proof of citizenship. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled Sept. 20 that these voters would not have to provide citizenship proof until after the November election.

Still, starting sometime soon after the state discovered the MVD problem, the state reprogrammed its system to flag those 218,000 voters if they tried to make a change to their voter record, to notify the counties that they hadn’t yet provided proof of citizenship. The Secretary of State’s Office provided guidance in early October to county recorders telling them that, even though the system was flagging these voters, they should continue to allow them to vote a full ballot until after November.

Instead, from the time the state’s system was reprogrammed to the voter registration deadline on Oct. 7, if a voter in Maricopa or Pinal county on this list of 218,000 tried to update their voter record using a state form, the counties flagged their registration until they provided proof of citizenship.

The counties both mailed at least some of these residents a letter to tell them they needed to provide proof of citizenship before they voted.

“After further consideration, the decision was made to fully restore those voters from the not registered status, only if they were previously an existing, registered voter,” Kinnerup said on Sunday. “This means any Maricopa County voter impacted by the previously discovered MVD data oversight has since been restored back to their original status of either full or fed-only ballot for this upcoming election.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Pinal County demanded proof of citizenship for 900 voters, then backtracked

2024-11-02T15:27:19+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Pinal County, Arizona, incorrectly told hundreds of longtime residents they needed to provide proof of citizenship before voting in Tuesday’s election.

The county’s decision to flag these voters’ registrations came to light when some of the voters tried to cast an early ballot for Tuesday’s election, and shortly after were notified by the county recorder’s office that they needed to provide proof of citizenship before 7 p.m. Election Day in order to have their ballot count.

The office backtracked on that decision after meeting with the Secretary of State’s Office on Friday. These voters — nearly 900 — will no longer need to provide proof of citizenship, County Recorder Dana Lewis said Friday night.

If the voters had already attempted to vote an early ballot and had the ballot put on hold, those ballots will now be counted. Others who had not cast their ballots yet will not see an issue when they go to vote, she said.

Maricopa city resident James Wilson was one of the voters who had their registrations flagged incorrectly.

Maricopa County restores around 2,000 voters after incorrectly demanding proof of citizenship

He told Votebeat Friday afternoon that he had cast his early ballot in a drop box Wednesday, and was notified Wednesday night he needed to provide proof of citizenship.

“I was like, ah, crap, I have to jump through hoops now,” he said.

On Friday night, though, after Votebeat began to ask the county and Secretary of State’s Office questions about the problem, Wilson got a call from the recorder’s office saying that was no longer the case, and his ballot would be counted. He said he was happy, but still frustrated that he had to deal with the problem.

Another voter contacted the Election Protection Arizona hotline run by a coalition of organizations, at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. The coalition reached out to the Secretary of State’s Office and Lewis on Friday, said Alex Gulotta, Arizona director of All Voting Is Local.

Instead, from the time the state’s system was reprogrammed to the voter registration deadline on Oct. 7, if a voter in Pinal County on this list of 218,000 tried to update their voter record using a state form, the county flagged their registration until they provided proof of citizenship.

The county mailed at least some of these residents a letter to tell them they needed to provide proof of citizenship before they voted.

A since-deleted social media post by Pinal County instructing certain voters to provide proof of citizenship.

This was the guidance even up until 5 p.m. Friday, when Lewis posted a video on social media platform X that said the voters needed to provide citizenship proof before 7 p.m. Election Day.

Votebeat spoke to Lewis around 7 p.m. Friday. She said that the county had just met with the Secretary of State’s Office to review the list of voters affected by the MVD problem, and determined that most of those who had been notified no longer needed to provide the citizenship proof.

Shortly after, the recorder’s office had deleted the video.

Correction, Nov. 2: This article originally misstated that the Aug. 22 decision came from the Arizona Supreme Court.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Suspicious voter registration forms in Pennsylvania linked to Arizona city councilman’s company

2024-10-31T21:29:30+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free newsletters here.

Two Pennsylvania counties have identified an Arizona-based company as the source of thousands of last-minute voter registration applications that they are investigating.

The company, Field+Media Corps, which conducts voter registration and outreach programs, is run by Francisco Heredia, a Mesa councilman and a longtime voting activist in Arizona.

In Monroe County, around 30 forms the company was “responsible for submitting,” which also included mail ballot applications, were “irregular” and included what the District Attorney’s Office described in a Facebook post as several that were “fraudulent as they were not authorized by the persons named as applicants.”

“In at least one example, the named applicant is in fact deceased,” District Attorney Mike Mancuso wrote in the post, saying several of the forms he described as fraudulent had been traced to a specific person.

York County Chief Clerk Greg Monskie confirmed to Votebeat Wednesday that Field+Media Corps submitted the forms that the county is investigating. Monskie said the company submitted the forms on behalf of the Everybody Votes campaign, a national nonprofit voter registration organization.

Everybody Votes said in a statement that the company has not been contacted by officials in Lancaster, York, or Monroe counties about ongoing investigations, but would help resolve any issues with the forms if contacted.

”Our partners work diligently to ensure all forms collected comply with all rules and regulations,” the statement said.

In a press release Wednesday, the county said that of the 3,087 applications under review, it had found that roughly 47% were legitimate, 29% had incomplete information, and 24% were “undergoing further review” by the York County district attorney.

Heredia told Votebeat that the company has not heard from any county officials in Pennsylvania, or received any information about problems with the forms it submitted there, but he said that the company would fully cooperate with any investigation in Pennsylvania.

Company’s voter registration efforts were flagged in Arizona

Heredia has been a councilman in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb of about a half million people, since 2017. He was reelected in July. Before joining the council, he was for years a leader of Mi Familia Vota, a prominent Latino voter advocacy group, according to his LinkedIn profile. For a short period in 2017, he was the community relations manager for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.

Field+Media Corps operates voter registration drives for clients in Arizona, too. Last year, both Navajo and Mohave counties flagged voter registration forms from the company and sent them to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for investigation, office spokesperson Richie Taylor confirmed to Votebeat Thursday.

Taylor said that Maricopa County prosecutors took the lead on investigating, because the forms were initially submitted there before being sent on to Navajo and Mohave. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office confirmed the office opened a related investigation, but was unable to immediately provide more detail.

Asked about the Pennsylvania and Arizona investigations, Heredia said the company trains workers to fill out forms accurately. When asked about the characterization of some submitted forms as fraudulent, Heredia said Field+Media Corps has a zero tolerance policy for workers who submit fraudulent forms.

He said the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office contacted his company last year in connection with an investigation into two canvassers the company employed. Field+Media Corps fired those two workers, Heredia said.

Clients or past clients of Field+Media Corps in Arizona include several prominent Arizona voter advocacy groups, including LUCHA, Chispa AZ, and CPLC Action Fund, according to the company’s website.

This election cycle, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office has flagged FieldCorps, the parent company of Field+Media Corps, for submitting a high percentage of incomplete or inaccurate forms, office spokesperson Sierra Ciaramella confirmed Wednesday.

Heredia said that he is in regular contact with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, and has been for years, since he began doing this work in Arizona. He said that he is open to ways that the company can turn in more accurate forms and that his company has a good working relationship with the county.

Arizona has long dealt with problems with incomplete, inaccurate, and potentially fraudulent voter registration forms. A Votebeat analysis earlier this year found that the problem leaves potentially eligible voters off the voter rolls just before the state’s voter registration deadlines.

When county officials receive an incomplete or inaccurate form, county workers reach out to voters to complete the forms. If they cannot do so, the registration is not processed.

False claims arise as Pennsylvania continues investigating

Heredia noted that his company reviews forms collected by workers in Pennsylvania before submitting them to check for things like similar signatures across multiple forms. But even if they spot problems, under state law, they must turn them in.

Heredia confirmed his company did voter registration work on behalf of Everybody Votes. He said his company worked in Pennsylvania for more than five months leading up to the registration deadline, submitting forms just about every other week. Election officials did not tell the company of any problems with their forms during that time period, he said.

His company no longer has workers in the state now that the voter registration deadline has passed, he said.

Pennsylvania is a hotly contested swing state, widely viewed as key to the presidential race, and its elections are under heavy national scrutiny.

Former President Donald Trump this week alluded to the counties’ announcements in social media posts, falsely claiming fake ballots had been found in Pennsylvania. Election experts pushed back, noting that the applications were flagged by election officials as potentially problematic, a sign the system is working, and that no ballots were involved.

In a third Pennsylvania county conducting an investigation, Lancaster County, officials have declined to identify the group or person who submitted the 2,500 forms they are investigating. District Attorney Heather Adams, a Republican, announced at a press conference last week that roughly 60% of the applications her detectives have reviewed so far were allegedly fraudulent, while others were legitimate. She has since described “hundreds” of the applications as fraudulent, but has not given an exact number or announced any criminal charges related to the investigation.

Adams declined to comment about whether Field+Media Corps had submitted the applications.

Monroe County’s Mancuso wrote on Facebook that his office is working with investigators from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and others as they continue to investigate.

The Pennsylvania Department of State emphasized in a statement Wednesday night that York and Lancaster counties had identified the potential irregularities only in voter registration applications, which they did not process — not in ballot applications or returned ballots.

“The counties’ process to flag and investigate these potentially fraudulent voter registration applications show the safeguards built into our election system are working,” Department of State spokesperson Geoff Morrow said.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

U.S. Supreme Court lets Virginia continue removing suspected noncitizens from voter rolls

2024-10-30T21:01:25+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free national newsletter here.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Virginia can remove roughly 1,600 voters it believes to be noncitizens from its rolls before next Tuesday’s election, even though federal law bans systematic cleaning of state voter rolls for 90 days before a federal election.

Justices issued a brief order granting Virginia’s emergency stay request and, as is typical in such instances, did not explain their legal reasoning. The order noted that Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents, would have denied the state’s request.

The order is a high-profile, albeit temporary, win for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who called it “a victory for common sense and election fairness.” It will apply for this election in the state, but the case will go back to the lower courts.

The broader implications are harder to read, given that the justices didn’t say which of Virginia’s arguments prompted their ruling.

“We have a bare order that could have been on any number of grounds,” said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, which represented organizations suing Virginia. “I have no doubt that some folks will construct this as some sort of permission slip more generally. That’s not what we have, but that’s the problem when the court issues orders with no reasoning.”

Republicans have been aggressively promoting the idea that noncitizens could be illegally registering and voting in federal elections. Republican attorneys general in 26 states and the Republican National Committee had filed a brief in the case, supporting Virginia’s request to halt a lower court ruling that would have kept the voters on the rolls.

Experts have repeatedly said that instances of noncitizens casting ballots are extraordinarily rare, and stress that it is already illegal. Any noncitizen who votes is subject to criminal penalties and loss of their legal immigration status. Election officials who have conducted audits have publicly reported finding only a small number of scattered instances of it occurring.

In multiple states in recent months, including Virginia, Alabama, and Texas, authorities asserted they had found thousands of potential noncitizens on voter rolls, but the lists of affected registered voters appeared to include many citizens.

Voting rights lawyers had also sued Alabama for violating the so-called quiet period in federal law, the 90 days before a federal election when officials are not permitted to systematically remove names from voter rolls. A federal judge earlier this month ordered Alabama to reinstate affected voters, and Alabama has complied, said Lang, who also represented plaintiffs in that case.

Virginia points to DMV records as basis for removals

The Virginia case is rooted in an executive order that Youngkin issued in August, after the quiet period began. The state said it was removing registered voters who self-disclosed to the Department of Motor Vehicles that they were not citizens. But in its Supreme Court brief, the U.S. solicitor general said that the state “treated a voter as matching a potential noncitizen identified by the DMV based on as little as a shared ‘first and last name.’”

The U.S. Department of Justice and voting rights groups objected to the removals, saying that Virginia had violated the quiet period and that the driver’s license records could reflect incorrect or outdated information — for example, if someone had since been naturalized. The restrictions on removing voters during the quiet period are meant to ensure that any eligible voter who is mistakenly caught up in such an effort has time to remedy errors and make sure they can vote, they argued.

Some conservative groups that focus on elections, including the Honest Elections Project, which had filed a brief supporting the state in the case, said Virginia should be allowed to proceed. “Every illegal ballot disenfranchises a lawful voter,” Jason Snead, the director of the Honest Elections Project, said in a statement after the ruling.

Voting rights groups stressed that Virginia has same-day registration, and eligible voters affected by this should be able to reregister at the polls and vote in Tuesday’s election. It is expected to affect around 1,600 people.

During the Knight Election Law Forum Wednesday, election lawyers said they were surprised by the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case. Benjamin Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer, noted that the court’s oft-cited Purcell Principle warns against getting involved too close to the election.

“It certainly does telegraph that the issue of noncitizen voters on the rolls will be part of post-election litigation if this is a close election,” Ginsberg said.

The lawyers agreed it wasn’t clear why the court ruled for Virginia. Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel during the Obama administration, noted that Virginia’s removals rested on somewhat individualized instances where a voter had given information to the state as part of the driver’s license process, as opposed to a systematic process affecting the broader voter rolls. “There is some question about what it means for purging generally, and I don’t think that should be overstated,” he said.

Lang and others pointed out that the election is in six days, many states have laws that also govern how and when voters can be removed from the rolls, and it’s not clear that election officials can feasibly alter their approach for this election.

Virginia removals part of wider GOP effort against noncitizen voting

Republicans around the country have been drawing attention to noncitizen voting as an election administration issue. Earlier this year, former President Donald Trump said congressional Republicans should shut down the government unless Democrats agreed to pass stalled GOP legislation that would institute proof of citizenship requirements for people registering to vote. Congress ultimately passed short-term funding for the government without attaching the proof of citizenship bill.

The fate of other efforts will be decided in the courts. Several states have also been singling out the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, saying the federal agency isn’t doing enough to help them check the citizenship status of some registered voters. Texas, Florida, and Ohio so far have sued DHS over the dispute.

In the lawsuits, the Republican-led states all argue that the federal government is refusing to turn over required information to help them verify the citizenship status of registered voters, and that the solution DHS offers them is inadequate.

The filings follow a legal road map set out by the Trump-aligned America First Legal Foundation in June, when the group sent top election officials in all 50 states a letter instructing election officials to submit requests to DHS, asking the agency to verify citizenship when there are “reliable indicators that a voter may not be a U.S. citizen.”

DHS already provides a way for states to verify someone’s immigration status. The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE, allows states that agree to certain terms the opportunity to check people’s immigration status. Those terms include providing any individual who is not verified as a U.S. citizen through SAVE the opportunity to show documentation of their U.S. citizenship.

The database search requires users to have a “unique DHS-issued immigration identifier” to search, and state officials say they don’t have that in voting records. The program also charges fees for use. The lawsuits, by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and others, assert that DHS must provide the information in some other way. In letters to state officials preceding the filing of the lawsuits, the agency says it can’t do that.

“There is no database of individuals existing in the country. That’s not a thing,” said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former White House senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden administration. Levitt said that even if the system did exist, the federal law mandating a quiet period means election officials couldn’t use the information until after the election anyway.

Paxton, Levitt said, “is demanding access to a system that does not exist…. and he is demanding it at a time when it cannot be used for the purpose he says he wants to use it for, and that’s what makes the demand nothing more than a publicity stunt.”

Other experts agreed. “It’s not actually clear to me that there’s a way for the federal government to give them what they want,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s voting rights program.

Testifying at a Texas state Senate hearing earlier this month, Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting head of DHS in the Trump administration who now heads the Election Transparency Institute, said the SAVE database isn’t user-friendly, but “it is the best record of noncitizens present in the United States that we have.”

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

She supports Trump’s anti-immigration policies. Texas incorrectly flagged her as a ‘noncitizen’ on its voting rolls.

2024-10-29T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power, and with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom that engages with Texans. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories here and The Texas Tribune’s newsletters here.

Mary Howard-Elley fervently believes illegal immigration in the U.S. is a critical problem that only former President Donald Trump can solve. She says the continuation of his border wall and promised mass deportations will make the country safer.

She agrees with Trump’s unfounded claims that Democrats are opening the borders to allow noncitizens to vote, fearing that it could ultimately cost him the election.

Howard-Elley didn’t pay much attention when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott helped fuel that narrative by announcing that the state had removed thousands of supposed noncitizens from its rolls, claiming some had a history of voting.

Then the U.S. citizen learned she was among them.

The elections office in Montgomery County, just north of Houston, had sent Howard-Elley a letter in late January saying that she had been flagged after she indicated that she was not a U.S. citizen in response to a jury summons. She had 30 days to provide the county proof of citizenship or she would be removed from the voter rolls, according to the letter.

The retired Transportation Security Administration agent was confused by how the county could come to that conclusion. And she seethed at the idea that anyone would question the citizenship of a former federal employee with the “whitest name you could have.”

“Who is allowing people to do this to United States citizens? I understand we have a problem with immigration, but come on now,” Howard-Elley said in an interview.

The 52-year-old disputes the county’s claim that she responded to the jury duty summons by saying she was not a citizen. Instead, Howard-Elley said, she called and asked to be exempted from jury duty because of guardianship duties for three of her grandchildren.

The Montgomery County district clerk’s office, which organizes jury duty, did not respond to repeated questions and denied a public records request for Howard-Elley’s response to the jury summons, asserting it was exempt from disclosure.

Regardless of how she was flagged as a noncitizen, Howard-Elley wanted to ensure she could vote. She ordered several copies of her certified Louisiana birth certificate and confirmed receipt with an elections office employee. She thought the matter was resolved.

But Howard-Elley’s registration was not reinstated, making her the 10th U.S. citizen identified by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and Votebeat who was removed from the rolls as a potential noncitizen. The news organizations tracked them down as part of an investigation that found Abbott’s claims about the state removing more than 6,500 noncitizens were likely inflated and, in some cases, wrong.

The 10 U.S. citizens who were struck from the rolls represented a range of racial and political backgrounds, and most were removed as the result of human error.

Abbott’s press release provided fodder for Republicans warning that noncitizens could vote in large numbers and sway the election, though experts say such instances are exceedingly rare.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the federal government last week, claiming the Department of Homeland Security has refused to help the state check the citizenship status of some registered voters. The federal agency offers states access to a database that can be used to verify immigration status, but Paxton argued it’s inadequate and requires a fee for each verification. Ten other states use the database for voting-related purposes.

Neither Abbott nor Paxton responded to questions for this story. DHS has not filed a response to the attorney general’s lawsuit in federal court.

From left: Howard-Elley with her grandsons, Skylar Lopez, 6, and Bryson Lopez, 8, at her home in Splendora, Texas.

Howard-Elley’s case shows how eligible voters can be removed from the rolls — and how tough it can be to get back on.

She didn’t realize her registration was canceled until reporters called her this month. Darla Brooks, the Montgomery County voter registration manager, told both Howard-Elley and the news organizations that she had not been reinstated in March because her birth certificate arrived after the 30-day window she was given to prove her citizenship.

On Oct. 14, Brooks said Howard-Elley had now also missed the registration deadline for this year’s election and would not be able to vote.

The election official was wrong.

Multiple voting rights lawyers pointed to a state law that says counties should immediately reinstate voters’ registrations that were wrongly canceled. Brooks initially told reporters that the law did not apply to Howard-Elley because the county had followed proper procedures when removing her.

But when the news organizations brought the same question to the Secretary of State’s office, which provides counties with guidance on implementing election laws, the answer was different.

A 2021 agency advisory instructs counties to immediately reinstate voters removed for failing to respond to a notice as soon as they present proof of citizenship. They can even be reinstated at a polling place on Election Day.

Less than two hours after the news organizations sent the Secretary of State’s advisory to Montgomery County, Howard-Elley was back on the rolls.

“I’m sorry that Montgomery County has to be shown the law to abide by it,” Howard-Elley said. She added that this election would have been the first time in more than 30 years she failed to cast a ballot for president. “I just hope they don’t do this to anybody else ever again, because it’s not fair.”

Montgomery County Elections Administrator Suzie Harvey said her office had never had to deal with a situation like Howard-Elley’s, and while she likely saw the advisory when it was issued, she had forgotten about the specific guidance. She said her office worked quickly to reinstate Howard-Elley when the news organizations flagged the advisory, and she is gratified that Howard-Elley will be able to vote.

“That would have been extremely tragic,” Harvey said.

Not every voter has Howard-Elley’s tenacity, or news organizations asking persistent questions about how their case was handled.

“Voting should not be so hard that you have to be a lawyer or have lawyer skills to be able to vote,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Perales said it would take “heroic efforts” by the average voter to research the election laws and advocate for their registration to be reinstated.

Even then, the decision would depend on how election officials in their county interpret laws and guidance.

Three county election officials gave different answers to the question of whether they would reinstate a voter in Howard-Elley’s situation, though all stressed they would try their best to follow the law.

One said the voter should be reinstated. The other two said they would likely reinstate the voter after the registration deadline only if the county had erred in some way.

Those differences give “voters in some counties fewer rights than voters in other counties,” said Emily Eby French, the policy director at Common Cause Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for voting access.

Howard-Elley said she is disturbed at how close she came to losing her ability to vote. If reporters hadn’t called her, Howard-Elley said, she might have been turned away at the polls.

She said she worries about whether other eligible voters are among those labeled as noncitizens and that Abbott should look into whether there are more U.S. citizens among them. The lifelong Republican said state and county officials need to be held accountable to ensure more U.S. citizens are not erroneously removed.

“The system is very flawed,” Howard-Elley said. “I feel really sad that we’re in a situation like this. You would think in 2024 we wouldn’t have issues like this.”

She intends to cast her ballot for Trump.

How to dispute your removal

If your voter registration is canceled because you failed to respond to a letter trying to confirm your citizenship, here’s what you can do:

Contact your county elections office before heading to the polls. Show proof of your citizenship and ask to be reinstated.
You can also share this 2021 advisory from the Texas Secretary of State’s office on reinstating citizens to the voter rolls.
Common forms of documentation include a U.S. passport or certified birth certificate. See the full list of acceptable proof of citizenship in the advisory.
If you don’t find out until you arrive at the polls that you need to show proof of citizenship, that advisory still requires election officials to reinstate you immediately after you do so.
Contact the Texas Secretary of State’s office for additional assistance.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Lexi Churchill and Vianna Davila are reporters for ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. Contact them at lexi.churchill@propublica.org and vianna.davila@propublica.org.

James Barragán is a politics reporter for The Texas Tribune. Contact him at james.barragan@texastribune.org.

With Texas’ paper-based voter registration system, applications get lost in the shuffle

2024-10-28T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.

Last year, Hannah Murry remembers, she filled out every line of her paper voter registration.

She then gave it to a volunteer deputy registrar at a registration drive at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, where she’s a student.

“I thought that was handled, so I just went on with my life,” said Murry.

It wasn’t handled.

Murry, 21, found that out when she went to an early voting location in Nueces County last fall to cast her first ballot, in the constitutional amendment election.

She handed her ID to an election worker — who told her she wasn’t on the rolls.

At that point, it was too late to fix it. Poll workers let her update her registration on site for the next election, which she did. She left confused and frustrated.

“I went there ready to vote, ready to be engaged, and then I was not able to,” she said.

Hannah Murry turned in a voter registration form at a campus registration drive at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, where she’s a student. But she wasn't on the rolls when she went to vote.

The same thing happens to people all over Texas, a Votebeat investigation found: Eligible voters who believe they have done everything necessary to cast a ballot don’t get the chance because their registrations didn’t make it into the system.

There is no simple way to know how many people are disenfranchised because of this, but more than a dozen local election officials and volunteer deputy registrars shared examples, and multiple people told similar stories: They filled out the paper application form, mailed it, gave it to a volunteer deputy registrar, or even went to their county office to drop it off — and still weren’t successfully registered.

Votebeat’s investigation found the problems apparently share a root cause: a registration system that relies on paper forms. Texas is one of only eight states without universally available online voter registration. Most people in the state have to fill out a paper form, whether they are registering through an election office or while getting a new driver’s license or state ID at the Texas Department of Public Safety. Only people who already have a Texas driver’s license and are engaging in an online transaction with DPS, such as renewing their license or updating their address, can use a DPS online portal to register.

The Texas Secretary of State’s office told Votebeat that offering online registration to all voters would require legislative action. State lawmakers have for years resisted efforts to do so.

That means information from hundreds of thousands of applications processed each year has to be entered into county election systems by hand — creating plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong.

Applications to register were available at a table during a Pride celebration in Corpus Christi on Oct. 5, 2024. In larger counties, volunteer deputy registrars help generate a large volume of registrations through community outreach.

Attempts to register via DPS, which handles roughly 2 million voter registrations a year, also didn’t always work. Public records obtained by Votebeat via a records request show election officials from at least 41 different counties contacted the agency during either the November 2022 general election or this year’s primary about more than 100 people who said they registered at DPS, but didn’t make it onto the rolls. Dozens of other inquiries to the agency sought information about voters whose DPS applications were incomplete, records show.

Election officials say the volume increases during presidential election years, making it more likely that some registrations could slip through the cracks.

“You want to be able to tell people, ‘You can do this, you can fill this out, check this box and you’ll be fine’ and that ‘Yes, you can trust in this system,’” said Valerie DeBill, vice president of voter services at the League of Women Voters in Austin, and a volunteer deputy registrar. “And it just doesn’t seem to really work the way that it’s supposed to.”

Volunteer deputy registrars, like the one who collected Murry’s application on campus, are legally required to bring all completed applications to county election officials. But that doesn’t ensure that they get properly recorded.

In Murry’s case, Nueces County received the form, according to Brenda Nuñez, the county’s voter registration supervisor, but it didn’t update her record to replace an earlier registration in Jefferson County.

Jessika Morales, 33, left, and Norma Davison, 73, look through voter registration cards at the Nueces County Courthouse in Corpus Christi on Sept. 11, 2024.

Murry said she didn’t receive anything in the mail after updating her information at the polls, but ultimately registered successfully through another volunteer deputy registrar she knew personally. She voted in the primary earlier this year in Nueces County.

“We research. We do the best we can to read voters’ handwriting, and to try to reach them to correct an issue [with the application] so they don’t get rejected, but it doesn’t always work,” said Nuñez, adding that voters also make errors. “They can transpose a number or forget to check a box. But we can make errors, too. We try to do our best, but it can happen.”

Errors and hurdles can slow registration

Texans must be registered to vote at least 30 days before the date of an election. Blank applications that voters can print out and complete are available online, as well as in any U.S. post office, at offices of the Health and Human Services Commission, the Texas Workforce Commission, and DPS, and at public libraries. Or voters can get them at registration drives at community events or college campuses.

County officials in charge of voter registration have workers assigned to process the forms as they come in. That includes manually entering the information on them into the county’s database. The applications are then scanned as images, and the physical forms are shredded once the registration is approved and the voter registration certificate is mailed. Large counties such as Travis and Collin hire several temporary workers to help staffers process registrations.

In Nueces County, which has more than 200,000 registered voters, Nuñez has two other full-time staff members and brings in four temporary workers to help them process the hundreds of forms that arrive daily during an election season. Retired city employees alphabetize the applications, check them line by line, and enter the information into the system.

Brenda Núñez, 59, voter registration supervisor, outside the Nueces County Courthouse in Corpus Christi. Voters make errors on their registration forms, Nuñez said, “but we can make errors, too. We try to do our best, but it can happen.”

Last week, as early voting got underway, Nuñez and her staff were flooded with phone calls from voters. Some said they tried to vote and couldn’t because they weren’t on the rolls. Others called because they were registered in another county and didn’t update their information on time.

Errors on applications slow things down, and workers can’t always reach the applicant to fix them in time for the next election.

At a September voter registration drive in Corpus Christi, a voter filled out his application and left. While reviewing it, volunteer deputy registrar Alex Flucke realized the voter had made a mistake on the street address. But the voter did not leave a phone number. In a case like this, election workers may try to look up the correct address, using maps and other resources. They’ll also likely mail the prospective voter a notice — though the inaccurate address could keep it from being delivered.

Flucke, 29, who is the vice president of voter services with the League of Women Voters in Corpus Christi, said applicants make errors all the time. “People don’t put their address, people don’t know their address, people don’t have their driver’s license, especially at high schools, and a lot of times they don’t know the last four [digits] of their Social Security number,” Flucke said.

She’s seen voters who forget to check the boxes at the top of the application asking whether they are at least 18 years old and a U.S. citizen.

“Every issue that you can experience with people filling out those forms, I’ve seen,” Flucke said.

People register to vote at a Texas Rising tent in Corpus Christi on Oct. 5, 2024.

Volunteer deputy registrars play an important role in the process, especially in larger counties, where they help generate a large volume of registrations through community outreach. But there are many steps they must follow. Texas has strict laws requiring anyone registering voters for a county to be certified as a volunteer deputy registrar in that county. Some counties offer online training, while other counties’ require training in person.

There’s no way to become certified statewide, which means volunteer deputy registrars often can’t accept applications from people who live in neighboring counties. They can offer a form from the Secretary of State’s office, but the voter must mail it back to that office, which forwards it to the voter’s county. Two weeks after the voter registration deadline, some counties were still receiving applications in the mail from the Secretary of State’s office.

Volunteer deputy registrars turn in all the forms they collect to county election officials, like Shannon Lackey, the elections administrator in Randall County.

“So many times those applications come in to us and they are nearly illegible, and so we are having to guess what their name is,” Lackey said. Often voters don’t realize that they have to put their legal name or exactly as it appears on their Social Security card, state ID or driver’s license, she added.

Voter registration applications wait to be processed at the Nueces County Courthouse in Corpus Christi.

Voter registration applications go astray

Since 2021, more than 2 million Texans have annually registered to vote through DPS, either through the paper forms or the web portal available to people who renew or update their state IDs or licenses. In just the first eight months of this year, that figure surpassed 3 million people.

But DPS employees can’t directly add someone to the voter rolls. The information they collect has to be conveyed first to local election officials through the state’s voter registration system, TEAM.

Sometimes, the information goes astray. In other cases, election officials told Votebeat, those applications are transmitted without the voter’s address, or with incorrect street names — information that election officials must have to assign voters to the correct precinct.

Enough registrations go astray that TEAM has a designated portal for election officials to submit inquiries to DPS about missing registrations. It’s also used to double-check a voter’s address or driver’s license number when that information is missing or unclear. There’s also a designated email address for such requests. Records obtained by Votebeat show a steady stream of inquiries.

At the Nueces County voter registration office in Corpus Christi, voter registration supervisor Brenda Nuñez has two other full-time staff members and brings in four temporary workers to help them process the hundreds of forms that arrive daily during an election season.

“The following voters stated that they registered through DPS in order to change their address prior to October 11, 2022,” Cynthia Lum, the election official from Houston County (population around 22,000), wrote in an email, listing 11 voters and asking the agency to check its records.

In an interview, Lum said that 2022 was the first time the county had such a high number of missing applications tied to DPS, and that the agency has improved.

As for the 11 voters she asked about in 2022, she could not say what the response was from DPS in each case. But she said such voters can cast a provisional ballot that gets counted once DPS is able to find and forward their completed registrations. Those who didn’t check “yes” on the small box asking if they wanted to update their voter registration remain ineligible, and their provisional ballots aren’t counted.

In November 2022, election officials in East Texas’ Nacogdoches County asked DPS about more than a dozen voters’ applications. Anderson County officials sought applications for 21 voters who said they’d registered at DPS but were not on the rolls and had to cast provisional ballots.

In North Texas, Kaufman County election officials sent DPS a list of 59 voters, records show, and an email from Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator, said all “have sworn provisional affidavits attesting that they registered with DPS since moving to Kaufman County.”

Smith then underlined and bolded one sentence: “Your response is critical in determining if their ballot is counted.”

In an email, Smith said she didn’t have time to respond to specific questions from Votebeat about her inquiry.

Doreen Geiger of Tarrant County, who has been a volunteer deputy registrar for two decades, told Votebeat she often advises new voters against registering to vote through DPS. “It’s just not very reliable,” Geiger said. “Give it directly to the elections office.”

Some voters who registered at DPS said they got to vote only because they stayed vigilant.

Sophie Sutherland, an Austin resident and native of England, obtained her American citizenship last year after living in the U.S. since 2005. But shortly before her naturalization ceremony, her purse was stolen. She decided to wait until after the ceremony to replace her license, so she could register to vote at the same time.

At DPS, she filled everything out and asked the clerk if she needed to do anything else. “No, that’s it. We’ve got it from here,” Sutherland recalls the clerk telling her.

Sophie Sutherland, of Austin, registered to vote at a DPS office after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, but her record didn't appear when she checked online later. She called a friend for help and submitted a new application just in time for the deadline.

But when she went to check on her registration online on Feb. 5, the deadline to register for the March primary, it wasn’t there. She quickly called a friend who’d been a volunteer deputy registrar who told her to immediately mail a new application and ensure it was postmarked that day.

That worked. But “most people are not going to be able to find the time or go to the bother,” she said. “Some people simply can’t.”

DPS officials didn’t respond to specific questions about why some applications fail to make it to county election officials. But in an email, the agency said the remedy is for election officials to contact DPS so the agency can check whether the person indeed selected “yes” on the voter registration application question.

To help prevent errors, DPS customers are asked to verify their selections before transactions are finalized, said Sheridan Nolen, DPS’s press secretary. That happens via a printout in person and through a confirmation page online, Nolen said.

A voter whose registration doesn’t come up on the voter rolls at the polls can cast a provisional ballot. More than half the nearly 39,000 provisional ballots cast in the state in the 2022 general election were due to the voter not being on an eligible voter list, according to data tracked by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, though it’s unclear how many of those voters said they had tried unsuccessfully to register.

If the voter tells election officials that they registered at DPS, election officials are legally required to investigate. Sometimes, voters are wrong — they think they registered when they actually didn’t. But if election officials are able to find the completed application, the voter’s provisional ballot can then be counted. Days after Election Day, voters are notified by mail whether or not their provisional ballot was counted.

The push for online registration stalls

Voters and some election officials say there ought to be a better way to make sure registrations stick.

Charles Williams, 69, a retired railroad conductor, mailed his voter registration application in June to the Travis County voter registration office. Two months later, Williams hadn’t received a confirmation.

His wife, who has been an election worker in Travis County, encouraged him to check on it, and after he did, it took Williams months of waiting, multiple calls, and repeat applications before he was able to confirm that he was registered. “I want to make sure I am able to vote in November,” he said.

His wife, Carla Jackson-Williams was outraged by the obstacles.

“I think they should allow you to go ahead and submit that application online, and then follow up with a written one,” she said. “At least then there is a record of someone who has applied, right? There’s a record and they can’t say it disappeared or that they don’t have it,” she said.

Bruce Elfant, the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said Williams’ experience is why he has, for years, advocated for online voter registration.

“I don’t know why the state is not willing to bring voter registration into the 21st century,” said Elfant, whose term ends in December. “I don’t know what business would operate like this, but we’re operating this aspect of the state government like this, and it’s shameful.”

A view of Austin, the state capital. Last year, a Democratic lawmaker representing Austin proposed bills to create an online voter registration system, but the bills never got a hearing.

The only form of online voter registration in Texas is through DPS, and the only people who can access it are those who already have a state ID or driver’s license and are updating their information through the agency’s online portal.

That option became available only three years ago, after voting rights advocates sued the secretary of state and DPS, alleging they were violating federal law by not providing Texans the option to register to vote online while updating and renewing their identification. To settle the case, the state agreed to allow those voters to use the online portal in those circumstances.

But Beth Stevens, a voting rights lawyer who represented the plaintiffs, said she knows it doesn’t always work.

Last year, State Rep. John Bucy of Austin, a Democrat, proposed bills that would direct the Texas Secretary of State’s office to create an online voter registration system.

The bills never got a hearing. He told Votebeat he hasn’t gotten a clear answer as to why. He plans to propose it again next year.

“This should have happened a long time ago,” Bucy said. “The problem is, we’ve got political leaders that care about their power over voter access, and so they’ve stopped it. But we know this works.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has yet to publicly take a stance on online voter registration. His office did not respond to requests for comment.

The last time lawmakers held a hearing on the issue was in 2015. At the time, Republicans raised concerns about whether it would enable voter fraud and identity theft. Supporters argued that the same risk existed with the paper forms, which ask voters for sensitive identifying information. Those forms are then handled by multiple people.

The lack of a voter’s signature on an electronic form was another concern. Supporters told legislators at the time that other states have addressed that by requiring voters to have a state ID or driver’s license in order to register electronically.

That’s now the case in Alabama, which implemented online voter registration in 2016. Residents there can register online, once they have a state ID or driver’s license on file, said former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican.

“We’ve never had a breach where any of our data had been corrupted, no improprieties, no concerns, no vulnerabilities have ever been exposed,” Merrill said. “You have to remember all of that has to be added to the voter roll by the local registrar, who still has to verify identity and verify the voter is qualified. No one is automatically added to the rolls. There’s still a process that has to be followed.”

Before Kentucky implemented online voter registration in 2016, the state relied on volunteers to return forms to the county, as Texas does. Sometimes those forms would not get turned in, said former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a Republican. Election workers dealt with backlogs of applications, errors in the forms, and typos.

But now, once a Kentucky voter fills out the form electronically, they receive an email confirmation, Grayson said.

“The confirmation is essentially like your receipt. It shows that a transaction happened, and that’s comforting for the voter,” he said. “It’s also a positive to the election administrator, because the worst thing that happens is when that voter comes out on election day and they’re not on the list.”

Online voter registration saved the state millions of dollars, led to more accurate voter rolls, and reduced backlogs and long lines during elections, Grayson said.

“There’s 43 states that have it,” Grayson said. “Nobody’s repealed it. It’s not controversial in these states. It’s just the way it’s done.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County detects signs of fraud in late-arriving voter registrations

2024-10-25T22:20:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

Lancaster County officials said Friday they identified an undisclosed number of voter registration applications as fraudulent, and the district attorney has launched a criminal investigation.

The three county commissioners on the board of elections, along with the county’s district attorney, said a number of suspicious registrations were delivered to the county near the Oct. 21 voter registration deadline.

District Attorney Heather Adams, a Republican, said the county elections director notified her that approximately 2,500 applications delivered near the deadline raised red flags. Adams said her detectives immediately started looking into the applications and finding signs of fraud.

Adams said elections staff found the applications suspicious because staff noticed numerous applications had the same handwriting, and were filled out on the same day with suspicious signatures. Some of the applications were for voters who were previously registered, and the signatures on file did not match the ones on the applications.

None of the applications identified as fraudulent were processed or resulted in a voter being added to the voter rolls or receiving a ballot, county officials stressed.

It is not clear precisely how many questionable registrations officials discovered. They said roughly 2,500 applications were delivered to the county, but only some of them have been flagged so far as suspicious and referred to the district attorney. Adams said roughly 60% of the applications her detectives have reviewed so far were allegedly fraudulent, while others were legitimate. Adams said the applications appeared to come from paid canvassers as part of an organized registration effort. She did not name the organization or organizations involved.

Upon investigating, Adams’ detectives discovered inaccurate addresses, false personal identification information, and fake names. Some applications also had names that did not match the provided Social Security number. Detectives found some applications that contained correct information, but when investigators contacted the people named on the application, they said they did not request or complete the application in question.

Adams added that two other counties had received similar suspicious applications, but did not name the counties or say how many potentially fraudulent applications they may have received.

Paid canvassers, working for both political parties, do occasionally cause problems, said Kyle Miller, a policy advocate with the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy.

“They are perversely incentivized to collect signatures,” he said.

Forrest Lehman, a longtime election director in Lycoming County, said these groups often do “shoddy” work and should be regulated more closely. He said one such group once dropped off a large volume of registration applications that all had checked the box indicating they had no driver’s license or Social Security number, which raised red flags for him.

“That’s my other observation from this, is that counties absolutely are looking at these things coming in,” Lehman said. “That means we have processes that work.”

“Anyone who tries [casting a fraudulent ballot], we’re going to find you,” said Lancaster County Commissioner Ray D’Agostino, who chairs the board of elections. He said the county is also cross-checking the fraudulent voter registration applications against applications for mail ballots.

The enforcement effort shows “how safe and secure the election system is,” Commissioner Alice Yoder said. “The election team caught this.”

In a statement, the Pennsylvania Department of State echoed that message.

“As the county’s efforts show, multiple safeguards exist to ensure the integrity of our elections, and Pennsylvanians can have confidence that this November’s election will be safe, secure, free, and fair,” spokesperson Geoff Morrow said.

The announcement comes after Lancaster County was accused this week of preventing Franklin & Marshall College students from registering to vote, prompting Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt to send the county a sternly worded letter.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

No, Michigan does not have more voters than residents eligible to vote

2024-10-24T17:13:42+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

A misleading claim promoted by right-wing activists has gained traction through X owner Elon Musk and other supporters of Donald Trump, feeding a false impression that there’s something wrong with Michigan’s voter rolls.

The claim — that Michigan has more voters than people eligible to vote — has been debunked extensively by the state as well as independent experts. A federal court ruling this week weighed in on a similar GOP claim, finding flaws in the comparison of data points and no proof that the discrepancy amounts to a violation of law, just as previous courts have found.

Musk and others cite the data points to argue that the discrepancy could enable fraudulent voting. The claim is based on a misunderstanding about the makeup of the state’s voter roll and what it means in relation to Census population data. It ignores the fact that the total number of registrations on the roll includes a large number of voters who are marked as inactive but who must be kept on the roll for several years under federal law. Most of those voters likely are no longer residents of the state.

The claim echoes a history of litigation from conservative organizations. Most recently, a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee in March argued that Michigan’s voter roll maintenance runs afoul of federal law, because 76 of Michigan’s 83 counties had voter registration rates higher than 90%. A federal judge’s ruling Tuesday shot that argument down, while also dismissing the suit on the basis that the RNC lacked legal grounds to bring it.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Jane M. Beckering noted that the plaintiffs “do not identify a single voter in any Michigan county who is ineligible to be registered but nonetheless appears as an active voter in the QVF,” referring to the qualified voter file.

Beckering agreed with the state’s characterization of the RNC’s complaint as an assertion that “something must be wrong with the Defendants’ program, but Plaintiffs do not know what it is.”

What is an active voter in Michigan?

The gist of the claim predates the RNC suit. For years, critics in public comments and lawsuits have alleged that Michigan cities and counties have more voters than eligible people. It’s a misunderstanding of who actually votes, and a claim typically used in an attempt to discredit the election in a critical swing state.

People may look at the number of residents 18 or older in Michigan (about 7.9 million in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) and the number of registered voters in Michigan (about 8.4 million, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office) and assume that there is a significant overcount in registered voters.

But these numbers are missing critically important context. Not every registered voter in Michigan is an active voter, which changes the math. An active voter is someone who has voted in the last six years or who has otherwise responded to a notice from the state government.

The Department of State confirms that Michigan has about 7.2 million active registered voters. That means that despite the state’s high registration rate, there aren’t more than 8 million people prepared to cast a ballot.

“There are about 1.2 million inactive records,” David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told Votebeat. “I always call them records, because they don’t represent voters. They’re people who left Michigan, who died.”

State law requires that the Secretary of State’s office maintain a list of inactive voters as a subset of registered voters. Those voters would still be eligible to vote, but if they cast an absentee ballot, it has to be treated in the same way as a challenged ballot. These ballots are counted as usual, but they are specially marked to identify them in case they need to be examined later under a court order.

If that voter showed up to vote in person, they would have to show their ID — like every voter in the state.

“It’s very small numbers who do, but they’ll still have to document that they’re in Michigan, still residing here, to activate their registration,” Becker said.

Under federal law, voters can’t be removed from the rolls before an election simply because they’re marked inactive. The National Voter Registration Act requires that a record cannot be removed unless that person has been inactive for at least two federal election cycles. That means that a voter who last voted in 2020 and has since been marked as inactive needs to be kept on the rolls until at least 2024. Also under the NVRA, officials cannot do large, systematic removals of voters during the 90 days before an election, known as the “quiet period.”

The Department of State says it has slated more than 600,000 voters on the roll for removal in 2025 or 2027.

Michigan’s voter list maintenance is “rigorous,” said Charles Stewart, professor of political science at MIT and director of the university’s Election Data and Science Lab. The efforts are bolstered by municipal clerks across the state, who, especially in smaller towns, often know the voters personally. In comparison, most states across the U.S. operate elections on a county level.

“Having this kind of list maintenance regime is kind of the price we pay for not living in a police state,” Stewart said, saying that other democratic countries have steep penalties for those who don’t inform officials of new addresses.

“We need a voter registration system that is as accurate as possible but also can be administered under this type of society in which we’re very reluctant to have big brother watching over our every move,” he said. “So we’re going to have imperfections, and we’re going to have safeguards within that imperfect system to keep to a very, very, very small minimum error.”

How does a Michigan voter get removed from the rolls?

If election officials learn that a voter has moved away from their jurisdiction, their registration will be canceled. If a voter dies or if there’s a duplicate registration, those too will be removed. Voters can also request that their registrations be canceled.

But it’s not a perfect system, which is part of what leads to a high number of inactive voters remaining on the roll. When someone dies, for example, that record is added to a list maintained by the Social Security Administration, according to the Department of State. The information is shared with the state, which then cancels registrations for any voters on the list. City and township clerks may also cancel registrations for dead voters if they have personal knowledge of the death — such as a published obituary or notification from a relative.

Sometimes, though, the Department of State isn’t able to confirm someone has died. In that case, that voter will be marked inactive and subject to the same removal timeline as other inactive voters.

If a voter moves within the state and updates their license with their new address, the state will automatically cancel that person’s previous registration and register them at their new location, the state said.

Out-of-state moves can be a bit more complex. There’s a group of states that share voter registration data with one another through the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. If another state flags that a Michigan voter is registered in that state, it triggers Michigan to send a notice of cancellation to that voter’s Michigan address. If the voter doesn’t respond and remains inactive, they are removed.

But not every state participates in ERIC — many Republican-led states have withdrawn from it in recent years — which can slow the process of finding an inactive voter who has moved.

A significant number of Michigan voters have been registered in recent years since the state enacted automatic voter registration through a 2018 constitutional amendment. As part of that, any eligible resident who applies for, updates, or renews their driver’s license or state ID is automatically registered to vote. (That’s one reason why about 81% of Michigan’s 18-year-olds were registered to vote as of Oct. 8.) That same amendment allowed Michigan voters to register on the day of an election.

A history of lawsuits

Claims that Michigan voters outpace the number of people able to vote have circulated before. In 2020, similar allegations arose in the city of Detroit, where people — including Trump — claimed that Detroit had more votes than residents in the city, resulting in a turnout above 100%.

This was never true either. In 2020, about 257,000 people voted in the city, compared with the 506,000 registered voters (and 639,000 people living there).

People made similar claims about townships throughout the state later that year — and again, those were untrue.

It’s those kinds of claims that fuel doubt about election results in Michigan, officials and experts say, despite the numerous measures designed to make the state’s elections secure and fair. Other states face such claims, too.

A 2018 study on the problem from the Brennan Center, written by Jonathan Brater — then counsel for the center’s Democracy Program and now Michigan’s director of elections — found that many efforts encouraging states to purge voter rolls in the name of list maintenance rely on claims that are “exaggerated and even flatly contradicted by the same sources of evidence on which they are based.”

One of those groups was the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group based in Virginia best known for suing states over their voting rolls. In its efforts to get local jurisdictions to change how elections are handled, PILF often included inactive voters in its analysis of registered voters. It also didn’t consider where data from the Census Bureau might not accurately reflect the local population, such as areas with significant student or military populations. PILF reached out to nearly three dozen Michigan counties between 2015 and 2017, the Brennan Center found, and along with three other core groups, more than 450 jurisdictions across the U.S. in its demands for mass removals from the rolls.

Not many of those jurisdictions were sued, but those that were targeted were predominantly communities with large minority populations, the report found.

“Good voter list maintenance benefits us all, and jurisdictions should strive to have top-flight practices,” Brater wrote in 2018. “Election officials should be wary, however, of exaggerated or false claims used to demand more purging.”

In a statement addressing Tuesday’s dismissal of the RNC lawsuit, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the court “dismissed a lawsuit designed to plant false seeds of doubt about the integrity of my work and our elections.”

All valid votes will be counted, she said, adding that she was grateful the court “affirmed our vigorous work to maintain the accuracy of Michigan’s voter rolls.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Texas lawmakers signal push to require proof of citizenship from voters

2024-10-17T01:18:33+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas lawmakers Wednesday signaled plans to consider a new law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, though even one of the strongest supporters of such legislation acknowledged instances of noncitizens voting are rare.

During a Senate State Affairs committee hearing, lawmakers expressed interest in reviving legislation modeled on a proof of citizenship requirement in Arizona, currently the only state with such a requirement in force.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the hearing on noncitizen voting after Gov. Greg Abbott issued a press release boasting that the state had removed more than potential 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls. An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Votebeat published this week found the governor’s figure was likely inflated and, in some cases, wrong.

The secretary of state’s office confirmed the news organization’s reporting during the hearing Wednesday after state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat, cited the article’s findings and pressed Christina Adkins, the state elections division director.

The news organizations found that between September 2021 and August 2024, counties removed 581 people from the rolls on the grounds that they were noncitizens, according to a report the secretary of state gave Abbott. The governor’s news release combined that figure with a separate number of people who were removed from the rolls after failing to respond to letters alerting them to questions about their citizenship and initially said more than 6,500 noncitizens had been removed. But U.S. citizens who simply never received or responded to such letters are almost certainly included in the governor’s numbers.

In addition, the news organizations have so far found at least 10 U.S. citizens in three Texas counties who were incorrectly labeled as noncitizens or removed from the rolls because they did not respond to a notice with questions about their citizenship. The news organizations’ previous story reported finding nine citizens; reporters have since confirmed another.

“So the actual number goes back to 581 that have been identified as noncitizens?” Zaffirini said.

“I would say 581 is the number we know,” said Adkins also acknowledged that failure to respond to a notice does not mean a person is not a U.S. citizen.

After the hearing, Zaffirini said she is concerned that the intense focus on making sure noncitizens aren’t on the voter rolls “will be interpreted as voter intimidation in some cases,” even if it’s not intended that way.

Nonetheless, multiple lawmakers on the committee, which is comprised of nine Republicans and three Democrats, said they believe the state needs to adopt requirements similar to Arizona’s 2004 law. Only six committee members attended all or part of Wednesday’s hearing, which covered multiple topics. Zaffirini was the only Democrat there.

Hughes proposed legislation last year that would require people to show proof of citizenship before they can vote, but it failed to move forward. On Wednesday he said he intends to file it again next session.

“We need to get it done,” Hughes said.

Republicans around the country have repeatedly raised unsubstantiated concerns about noncitizen voting in recent weeks, assertions that former President Donald Trump and his party are using to cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming November election.

In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has pressed Secretary of State Jane Nelson to demand the federal government’s assistance in identifying potential noncitizens on the rolls. On Wednesday, he and 15 other attorneys general sent a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, saying the agency had failed to respond quickly and helpfully enough to their requests for assistance.

Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and former acting deputy secretary of DHS, told lawmakers at the hearing that obtaining information about noncitizens will be costly and unreliable, and said a USCIS database is “not particularly well designed” or easy to use.

But the database is “the only database of noncitizens present in the United States that we have,” he said, adding, “there is no database of who’s a citizen.”

U.S. CIS has been going back and forth with officials in several states, including Texas, over what it can provide.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican, acknowledged such instances of noncitizens voting are rare but recalled his experience removing some from the rolls when he was voter registrar in Harris County more than 20 years ago.

“Now, small numbers, but actually things that have occurred,” he said. “So when we’re talking about this, it’s important to know that there are actually instances.”

States should be allowed to use Social Security data to determine citizenship, Bettencourt said in an interview after Wednesday’s hearing. The data would not encompass every person living in the United States –– not everyone has a Social Security number –– but would cover most people, he said.

Adopting a system like Arizona’s would be a major shift for Texas, and would bring new administrative burdens.

Under federal law, all U.S. voters must attest to their citizenship to register, but do not need to prove it. In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizona must allow residents who do not provide proof to vote in federal elections. That means the state has a unique bifurcated system, with a separate “federal only” list of around 40,000 people who can vote in federal elections, but not in state and local races.

But there have been glitches. Arizona officials discovered this summer that for decades, the state has been labeling some voters as having provided documents proving U.S. citizenship, when in fact they had never been asked to do so.

The error, affecting at least 218,000 longtime residents in the state, came about because the Motor Vehicle Division had incorrectly labeled the type of driver’s license the voters had, and county recorders were relying on that driver’s license information to verify citizenship when someone registered to vote. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled last month that the voters will not need to provide the proof of citizenship before November’s election, although they will need to before the next election.

Cuccinelli, who now is chairman of the conservative Election Transparency Initiative, praised the Arizona bifurcated system.

“There are bad actors. They’re the minority, but you can zero in on them a whole lot easier if they’re only on your smaller list,” he said.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Vianna Davila is an investigative reporter with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Contact her at vianna.davila@propublica.org.

Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and James Barragán, The Texas Tribune, and Jen Fifield, Votebeat, contributed to this story.

Gov. Greg Abbott boasted that Texas removed 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls. That number was likely inflated.

2024-10-15T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

In late August, with a hotly contested presidential election less than three months away, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott boasted that the state had removed more than 1 million ineligible voters from its rolls, including more than 6,500 noncitizens.

The Republican governor said the Texas secretary of state’s office was turning over nearly 2,000 of those characterized as noncitizens to Attorney General Ken Paxton for investigation, because records showed they had a voting history.

“Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated,” Abbott said in a press release.

The former registered voters whom Abbott called noncitizens, and the other people removed from the rolls since September 2021, were taken off through a routine practice local election officials conduct that includes culling the names of people who have moved or died. Election experts have urged caution in using the numbers to make definitive statements about registered noncitizens.

But Abbott did just that, initially stating in his news release that thousands of noncitizens had been stripped from the rolls.

His office then edited the press release after publication, softening it by adding the word “potential” before noncitizens.

The news release, put out Aug. 26, initially said “6,500 noncitizens” were removed from the rolls. By Aug. 28, the statement had been updated online to say “6,500 potential noncitizens."

Abbott’s claims helped to fan ongoing unsubstantiated Republican allegations that noncitizens plan to cast ballots en masse to sway elections for Democrats, assertions that former President Donald Trump and his party are using to cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming November election.

An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and Votebeat, however, found that the governor’s claims about noncitizens on the rolls appear inflated and, in some cases, wrong.

The secretary of state’s office identified 581 people, not 6,500, as noncitizens, according to a report it gave Abbott in late August that the newsrooms obtained through a public information request.

In response to questions about the basis for Abbott’s larger number, the secretary of state’s office told the news organizations that it had “verbally” provided the governor’s office with a separate number of people removed from the rolls who failed to respond to letters alerting them that there were questions about their citizenship.

The governor’s news release combined the two figures.

That means U.S. citizens who simply never received or responded to such letters are almost certainly included in Abbott’s 6,500 number. Abbott did not respond to requests for comment, and Secretary of State Jane Nelson declined to be interviewed.

After attempting to contact more than 70 people across both categories, the news organizations have so far found at least nine U.S. citizens in three Texas counties who were incorrectly labeled as noncitizens or removed from the rolls because they did not respond to the letters about their citizenship. In each case, they showed reporters copies of their birth certificates to confirm their citizenship, or reporters verified their citizenship using state records.

One of them is 21-year-old Jakylah Ockleberry.

Ockleberry, a native Texan who provided the news organizations with a copy of her birth certificate, had left the state only twice in her life, including a recent trip to California.

She said she had no idea Travis County had mislabeled her as a noncitizen until the news organizations contacted her. “How would something like that happen?” she said.

When the governor’s press release came out, election experts and local officials were worried about cases such as Ockleberry’s, saying the press release implied officials had confirmed the noncitizen status of 6,500 people when they had not.

Five years ago, Texas officials suggested that nearly 100,000 noncitizens were registered to vote and that nearly half of them had cast ballots. Those claims quickly unraveled under scrutiny and spurred a lawsuit and settlement that now governs how Texas can flag someone as a potential noncitizen.

Asked whether the nine people the news organizations identified as U.S. citizens were included in Abbott’s latest figure, the secretary of state’s office said it could not confirm or deny the inclusion of any specific people. Local election officials said they don’t know which voters were included in Abbott’s tally, but emphasized the data originates at the county level.

The discrepancies show the pitfalls inherent in using this data to make assertions about noncitizens.

In Ockleberry’s case, as well as those of four others the newsrooms identified in Travis County, election workers should have selected a code that indicated the voters had moved. Instead, they mistakenly selected a code for noncitizens.

Bruce Elfant, the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, acknowledged the errors made by his office. He also said the numbers suggested that noncitizen voting “is an infinitesimal, small issue.”

Routine maintenance of voter rolls is important, and if noncitizens are registered, they should be removed, said Marc Meredith, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on election administration.

But Meredith said Abbott’s decision to announce without explanation that 6,500 noncitizens were removed from the rolls, and to initially do so without qualifying that these were only potential noncitizens, “reduces trust in the Texas voter registration process in an unnecessary way.”

Routine maintenance, political purpose

Voter rolls are naturally fluid. People move, die, become citizens, and turn 18. Election officials across the country are constantly adding and removing people for legitimate reasons.

“So long as we have requirements about keeping lists clean, and so long as we don’t have a police state that has a single database with all of our names in it, like in much of the rest of the world, including democratic nations, we’re going to come across these sorts of problems,” said Charles Stewart III, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

Elfant, for one, said he was frustrated by Abbott’s public promotion of voter removal data. He said the governor’s press release created confusion among residents who feared they might have been wrongly removed and would not be able to cast ballots in the upcoming presidential election.

“It scared a lot of people. We’ve received a lot of phone calls and emails from people who are concerned that they’re not on the voter rolls,” Elfant said.

Any number of things can trigger a question about a voter’s eligibility.

For example, county registrars contact anyone who has marked on a jury summons that they’re not a citizen. The registrars need to confirm if that’s true, because it would mean the person is also ineligible to vote. The secretary of state’s office also gets information weekly from the Texas Department of Public Safety about people who have signed up for licenses and state identification and identified themselves as noncitizens. That information is then sent to counties.

In such cases, county election officials must follow up. They are required by law to notify voters and give them 30 days to respond before they’re removed from the rolls.

But election officials know those safeguards don’t always work.

“The post office messes up. We get a lot of cards back or mail back that says ‘undeliverable,’ and the person will be like, ‘I’ve lived at this address for 20 years and I’ve never moved,’” said Trudy Hancock, elections administrator in Republican-leaning Brazos County, home to Texas A&M University. “So you have to consider that there are outside circumstances that can affect our efforts to reach them.”

Failure to respond to a letter questioning someone’s citizenship is not a confirmation that they are not a citizen, election officials said.

The 2019 episode, when the secretary of state’s office announced that it had identified 95,000 registered voters as potential noncitizens and said that more than half of them had previously cast ballots, highlighted failures in the process.

Paxton, the attorney general, immediately turned to social media, posting “VOTER FRAUD ALERT.” Abbott thanked Paxton and the secretary of state’s office on Twitter for “uncovering and investigating this illegal vote registration.” Trump also piled on with a tweet calling the state’s numbers “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Voting rights groups sued, decrying the state’s efforts as deliberate attempts to suppress the votes of actual citizens. Texas’ assertions didn’t hold up. Many of the flagged registered voters turned out to be naturalized citizens whom the state incorrectly identified as ineligible because it was using outdated DPS data from driver’s license and state identification card applications. (DPS did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

The state settled the case and agreed to flag people with the secretary of state’s office only if they identify as noncitizens when applying for a new ID with DPS and if they previously registered to vote.

State officials should be transparent about how they arrived at the latest assertions, said David Becker, executive director and founder of The Center for Election Innovation & Research.

With the August press release, the state appears to have presented a figure without fully explaining its methodology or double-checking the information, said Becker, who is a former senior trial attorney in the voting section of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

If the governor presented this data in a court of law without evidence, Becker believes it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.

“Their claims would likely be dismissed until they could come up with something that actually documents how they got to those numbers,” he said.

Labeled noncitizens

When Justin Comer, 29, heard that the state had removed thousands of noncitizens from the voter rolls, it never occurred to him that he might be one of them. Comer was born in Harris County, the home of Houston, and grew up in conservative Montgomery County just outside the city. He said he’d been registered to vote there since he was 18 and had cast ballots in presidential elections since then.

“I’ve always been interested in especially local politics, and just making sure I stay up to date with that,” Comer said in a phone interview. “I’m always pushing my wife now, I’m like, ‘Hey, we need to stay active in that respect and do our part.’”

It wasn’t until the news organizations contacted him that he made the connection between a peculiar voter registration issue he encountered last year and the Republican leaders’ sweeping noncitizen voting claims.

How to check your Texas voter registration status

In 2023, he received a notice from the county elections office that he’d been flagged as a potential noncitizen. He needed to show proof of his citizenship in the next 30 days or his registration would be canceled, the notice said. The letter Comer received indicated he’d said he wasn’t a citizen in a response to a jury summons. Comer assumes he clicked the wrong button when responding to the notice online; he had meant to reply that he had moved. He’s now registered to vote in Collin County, where he lives.

“I was more just confused,” Comer said. “I’ve lived in Texas my whole life. It was never a question for me.”

In some cases, it’s unclear what happened. Diana Colon spent much of her life in the mountains of Puerto Rico, in the town of Aibonito, but moved to El Paso County on the far western edge of Texas in 2018 to be closer to her daughter.

She was surprised when she learned the county had kicked her off its voter rolls after she apparently failed to respond to a question about her citizenship. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and she is an American citizen. She showed a copy of her birth certificate to a reporter.

“That’s crazy,” she said.

Colon does not recall registering to vote, though the county said it received an application from her at some point in which she did not answer a question about her citizenship. Public information the county provided the news organizations indicated she was flagged as a potential noncitizen in DPS data.

Colon has since moved to California but would like to return to the El Paso area and would register to vote, if only to clear up the fact that she can. “I wouldn’t like people saying I’m not a U.S. citizen,” she said in an interview.

There are almost certainly additional U.S. citizens among the thousands of removed voters Abbott characterized as noncitizens. For example, reporters identified Texas birth certificates for another two voters whose registrations in Montgomery County were canceled for not responding to questions about their citizenship. The news organizations could not reach those voters for comment.

Noncitizens have occasionally voted, but experts say these cases are rare and there is no evidence that they affect election outcomes. Noncitizens who vote face criminal penalties, including the loss of their residency status and deportation. In 2017, Rosa Ortega, a U.S. permanent resident living in North Texas, said she believed her green card authorized her to vote and cast five ballots over a decade. A Tarrant County jury convicted her of voter fraud and sentenced her to eight years in prison.

Meredith, the University of Pennsylvania elections expert, said he wouldn’t be surprised if some people removed from the Texas rolls are indeed noncitizens who had cast ballots in a previous election. But that doesn’t mean the problem is widespread. “You shouldn’t use the fact there may be a few as evidence that it happens all the time,” Meredith said.

Reporters also found some noncitizens, including two who said they had inadvertently registered after receiving what they said were unsolicited voter registration applications, an ongoing concern for Republicans who believe this kind of outreach will result in large numbers of noncitizens signing up to cast a ballot. One got the application from a voting advocacy group. But the other got it while filling out other state paperwork.

In both cases, they had truthfully filled out the form and said they were noncitizens. Neither one voted. Election workers in the two counties involved, Collin and Travis, said those voter registration applications should not have been processed, because the applicants identified themselves as noncitizens, and both people were added to the rolls through clerical error.

One of them, Austin resident Son Mai, said he had no idea he had ever been on the rolls until a reporter contacted him.

The news organizations viewed three voter registration applications from Mai in which he checked a box saying he was not a U.S. citizen. They interviewed Mai, who is originally from Vietnam and speaks limited English, through an interpreter.

Mai, who has been a permanent resident and green card holder for over 40 years, receives Social Security disability benefits and food stamps. Voter registration applications are included with that paperwork, which he believes is how he was mistakenly signed up.

However, Mai always marked that he is not a U.S. citizen on the forms, the county confirmed. As a result, Travis County should have automatically rejected his application, but elections officials said he was accidentally added to the rolls instead. The county confirmed Mai has never voted, though he said he hopes to become a naturalized citizen.

“I told them I couldn’t vote,” he told the reporters. “I never vote.”

Building a case

With the election less than a month away, claims about noncitizen voting have continued to ratchet up despite numerous elections experts saying such instances are very rare. These efforts can have significant consequences.

The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit last month in Nevada alleging that nearly 4,000 noncitizens may have cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election and that thousands could vote in the coming election. (Nevada’s former secretary of state, who is Republican, did not find evidence to substantiate the 2020 claims during an investigation at the time.)

Last month, the Justice Department filed suit against Alabama after its secretary of state flagged more than 3,000 alleged noncitizens and instructed county officials to remove any noncitizens from their voter rolls, although systematic voter roll cleaning is illegal so close to a federal election. In a statement, the Justice Department said its review found that naturalized and native-born American citizens had been caught up in the effort.

In Texas, both Abbott and Paxton have promoted claims of noncitizens seeking to vote in the November election.

On a single day in August, Paxton said his office would investigate an allegation that nonprofits were setting up booths outside state driver’s license offices and signing up noncitizens to vote, which followed an unfounded claim peddled by a Fox News host, and announced his agency had raided homes in three South Texas counties to investigate allegations of voter fraud. The next day, the attorney general appeared on the radio show of conservative personality Glenn Beck pushing debunked claims that President Joe Biden is allowing immigrants to enter the country illegally so they can vote for Democrats in elections.

In recent weeks, Paxton put out a flurry of news releases, continuing the hunt for noncitizen voters.

Paxton, who did not respond to a request for comment, sent a public letter to Nelson, the secretary of state, last month urging her to demand the federal government’s assistance in identifying potential noncitizens on the rolls.

But Nelson, a Republican and an Abbott appointee, apparently didn’t move aggressively enough for Paxton. In an Oct. 2 news release, the attorney general expressed frustration with Nelson, saying she had not provided the federal government any information about the possible noncitizens. He then asked Nelson’s office to provide him with the list of names so he could send it on to the government himself.

Hours later, Nelson provided Paxton the voter records for anyone who does not have a Texas driver’s license or identification card number on file in its statewide voter registration system. The list was accompanied by an explicit warning.

“The records do not reflect, and are in no way indicative of, a list of potential non-United States citizens on the State’s voter rolls,” Nelson wrote.

Dan Keemahill of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, Alejandra Martinez of The Texas Tribune, and Thomas Wilburn of Votebeat contributed data research and reporting.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.