Supreme Court Will Decide If States Can Actually Verify Voter Citizenship Before Elections

Here’s what should be the simplest question in American democracy: Can states verify that voters are actually citizens before they cast ballots? Apparently, according to the 9th Circuit Court, the answer might be no. And that’s exactly why the Supreme Court is stepping in this December to hear RNC v. Mi Familia Vote, a case that will determine whether Arizona can enforce basic citizenship requirements without some lower court crying “voter suppression.”

The timing couldn’t be more relevant. Federal prosecutors just charged a Honduran national with voter fraud in California after he allegedly registered to vote using an alias and cast ballots in multiple elections. The kicker? He got his voter registration card using a gym membership as proof of residency. A gym membership. Let that sink in for a moment while you consider that election groups are now warning the Supreme Court that affirming the lower court’s ruling could make it nearly impossible to remove noncitizens, minors, or even fictitious people from state voter rolls.

Arizona passed two straightforward laws. First, voters must show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering. Second, the state can remove noncitizen registrations from voter rolls within 90 days of an election. These aren’t revolutionary concepts. They’re common sense guardrails that most Americans probably assume already exist everywhere. But the 9th Circuit decided these measures violate the National Voter Registration Act, effectively handcuffing states from enforcing the most basic qualification for voting.

Justin Riemer, president and CEO of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, nailed it in his statement. “Citizenship is a qualification for voting. If states are going to enforce that requirement, they have to be able to verify it.” It’s not complicated. When officials find noncitizens on the voter rolls, they should act before an election, not after. Waiting until after the damage is done isn’t election integrity. It’s political theater.

The amicus brief filed Thursday by multiple election integrity groups doesn’t mince words. They called the 9th Circuit’s ruling “absurd” and argued it raises serious threats to state rights. And they’re right to be blunt about it. Congress can regulate the mechanics of federal elections, sure. But states have the constitutional authority to set and enforce voter qualifications. That power becomes utterly meaningless if states can’t obtain documentation to verify citizenship or remove people who were never eligible in the first place.

The federal law generally requires states to complete systematic voter removal programs at least 90 days before a federal election. It allows removals during that window for specific reasons like a voter’s request, death, criminal conviction, or mental incapacity. But apparently, being a noncitizen doesn’t make the cut according to the 9th Circuit’s interpretation. Think about that absurdity for a second. You can remove someone who died or asked to be removed, but not someone who was never legally allowed to vote? That’s not protecting voting rights. That’s protecting voting fraud.

Even Democrat governors are starting to acknowledge the problem. New Jersey’s governor recently announced that thousands of noncitizens were discovered on voter rolls and subsequently purged. Thousands. In one state. And that’s just what they found when they actually looked. How many states aren’t looking? How many courts are preventing them from looking?

The constitutional question here cuts deeper than process and procedure. The amicus brief argued that “the power to establish voting requirements is of little value without the power to enforce those requirements.” It would raise serious constitutional doubts if federal statute prevented states from obtaining information necessary to enforce voter qualifications. This isn’t about making voting harder for citizens. It’s about ensuring that only citizens vote, which used to be something everyone agreed on before politics infected every corner of civic life.

The Supreme Court needs to reverse this misguided ruling and restore sanity to election administration. States must have the tools to verify citizenship and maintain clean voter rolls. Otherwise, we’re not talking about election integrity anymore. We’re talking about election fiction, where the rules exist on paper but enforcement is deemed discriminatory. That’s not democracy. That’s chaos dressed up in the language of inclusion.

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