Two-Fold Danger for Americans … AND Non-Citizens
By Kristine Christlieb | July 24, 2024
A recent post and follow-up comments on X (formerly Twitter) suggest automatic voter registration not only presents problems for the integrity of state voter rolls, it also harms vulnerable non-citizens.
“I’m a non-citizen and the DMV automatically registered me to vote” wrote X user Reddit Lies on a subreddit thread about the naturalization process. “The DMV told me green card holders could vote.” Then Reddit Lies asked, “WTF is going on at the DMV?”
Automatic Voter Registration
Automatic voter registration (AVR) did not exist prior to 2015, and the relatively recent process has gone through only two presidential election cycles. The latest of which was notorious for a wide variety of voting anomalies, many stemming from suspicious activities on the voter rolls, the Qualified Voter File (QVF).
As of February 2024, nearly 50 percent of the states and the District of Columbia had adopted voter registration automation.
Typically, these systems are tied to high-traffic government agencies such as the Social Security Administration or, more frequently, to departments of motor vehicles (DMV).
Other implementation details vary by state, but by-and-large, the systems fall into one of two camps.
Front-end AVR requires citizens to decline or accept voter registration at the time of transaction, for example, when applying for a driver’s license.
Back-end AVR registers everyone at the time of transaction and then sends a postcard asking if the individual wishes to opt out. Non-citizens, who must opt out since it is illegal for non-citizens to vote, must then return the postcard stating their opt-out decision.
AVR advocates argue these automated systems make it easier for people to register to vote and increase the voter pool and voter participation in elections. In a pros and cons article about AVR, the issue of non-citizen registrations went unmentioned.
During a recent U.S. House debate over the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, SAVE, which would require voter registrants to provide proof of citizenship, opponent Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) claimed non-citizen voter fraud was a non-issue. “They [supporters of the SAVE Act] are going to disenfranchise millions and millions of people in response to what we know has maybe been a couple of dozen cases of voter fraud over the past two decades.” [starts at 29:01]
SAVE, which was designed to prevent non-citizens from registering and voting, passed the U.S. House and now moves to the Senate.
What McGovern and other Democrats fail to acknowledge is how many non-citizens are unwittingly or accidentally added to state voter rolls through Automatic Voter Registrations systems. Nor are they admitting to the negative impact AVR can have on the non-citizens’ lives.
Lives Upended
Returning to the subreddit thread on the naturalization process, jayelleishere wrote:
“Hey guys, I just recently found out that I'm registered to vote and I'm not yet a citizen, I don't remember registering myself to vote at all so I was thinking maybe the DMV just automatically put me in the list of people that wants to register or I probably just checked something wrong. I haven't applied my citizenship yet and I just wanted to see what I should do? There's a question in the n-400 application that states "Have you ever unlawfully stated that you're a US citizen?" should I say yes or no?”
Or consider this case from a non-citizen living in Texas.
“Hey y'all. I reside in Texas, and recently became a permanent resident (conditional GC). I know that PRs aren't allowed to vote, and it’s actually considered illegal. In fact, one can be denied the US citizenship if USCIS has reasons to believe they attempted to vote. With that being said, for some reason, I got my daily digest from USPS today, and I saw a freaking voter registration card. Why? I did not register for anything, I am not planning to vote, I do not want to vote until (hopefully) I become a US citizen.”
In 2020, PBS News reported on a heartbreaking case: “The day Margarita Del Pilar Fitzpatrick applied for an Illinois driver’s license upended her life. When a clerk offered to register her to vote in 2005, the Peruvian citizen mistakenly accepted, leading to long legal battles and eventually deportation.”
In the same year, a programming error in Illinois’ automatic voter registration system mistakenly registered hundreds of non-citizens, and sixteen of them voted.
In Fitzpatrick’s case, she became confused by a DMV employee who told her it was “up to you” if she wanted to register to vote … so she did.
It is easy to imagine how that kind of confusion can happen when DMV employees are trying to communicate with non-native speakers.
Requiring proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration protects the integrity of the voter rolls, but it also protects non-citizens who are eager to become citizens and are trying to navigate the process – legally.
Kristine Christlieb volunteers for Michigan Fair Elections and serves on MFE's communications team. She publishes Trust but Verify on Substack. https://open.substack.com/pub/trustbutverifyreport/p/voter-registration-blitzkrieg?r=2haa2x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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