Strong checks and balances in our election system made sure that the 2024 election was free and fair.

Want proof? Recent polls show a broad increase in trust in the election system – across the political spectrum. 

But even knowing that, state lawmakers across the country have dreamed up some new laws that would saddle American voters with even more bureaucratic mandates to prove their citizenship to vote. 

In every state, when you register to vote, or vote for the first time, you have to provide either a Social Security number or an official state ID like a driver’s license. 

Election officials can then use this information to confirm your citizenship and eligibility to vote. It’s been this way for more than 20 years. 

Also, before and after elections take place, officials verify and cross-check state and federal voter databases to ensure all voter registration lists are accurate and up-to-date. And when it comes time to count the votes, bipartisan teams of officials work together to ensure that all ballots are cast by eligible citizens and counted accurately.

These new requirements would mean that you’d need to bring even more documents with you to register to vote, and possibly even to cast a ballot. An expensive passport. An original birth certificate.

If you can’t find those documents in time, or if they don’t match your name exactly as it appears on your ID right now – say, because you changed your name after marriage – your voter registration could be canceled and your freedom to vote taken away.

Almost half of voting-age Americans don’t have a passport, and it’s $165 just to get one! 

Here’s how some of these new state laws have blocked eligible voters from making their voice heard at the ballot box: 

• Arizona struggled with Proposition 200 (passed in 2004). This created a two-tiered voter registration system. Under this “tiered” system, voters who do not present proof of citizenship at registration are barred from voting in state and local races. The new requirements for state elections created a total administrative disaster, resulted in costly litigation, and threatened the eligibility of over 200,000 voters in the 2024 elections. 
• Texas used outdated DMV records to check its voter list for citizenship status. Tens of thousands of eligible naturalized citizens got flagged for removal from the voter rolls in 2019. 
• Kansas enacted one of these documentary proof of citizenship laws that blocked one in eight new registrants from voting in the three years it was in effect. The law was found unconstitutional and struck down in court.

We already have strong safeguards in our laws that work.

• Studies, audits, and data from multiple elections consistently show that noncitizen registration is rare and noncitizen voting is even more rare. 
• During a recent Republican National Committee training session, an election integrity specialist even told Pennsylvania poll watchers that noncitizen voting is “close to impossible” due to those robust safeguards already in place.

These new mandates are totally out of touch with what we want from our lawmakers right now. 

We need legislators to do their jobs, and focus on the economy! Instead of tearing down our system of checks and balances to win at all costs and burdening us with divisive, unnecessary mandates, our leaders should be focused on what unites us.