Voters approved Republican-backed constitutional amendments intended to make clear that only U.S. citizens can vote in elections in all eight states where they appeared on the ballot, according to NBC News projects.
A clear majority of voters in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin have passed constitutional amendments that explicitly make it illegal for non-citizens to vote in state and local elections – even if it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in elections in those states and at the federal level, even though this happens rarely.
Republican Party-controlled legislatures in these eight states — where lawmakers control the constitutional amendment process, not citizens — relegated these proposed changes to this year’s ballots.
Election experts have warned that the measures were one of several ways Republicans at the national and state levels have tried to push the baseless narrative that noncitizens vote in large numbers in ways that could sway the outcome of elections up and down the ballot.
No state constitution allows non-citizens to vote. Outside of the eight states with the ballot measures, certain cities and towns in three states, as well as Washington DC, have allowed non-citizens to vote in some local elections.
Supporters of the voting measures have argued that they are a way to get ahead of potential problems associated with non-citizen voting.
The amendments passed in Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin will change existing language in those states’ constitutions to state that “only” citizens can vote. The current language states that “any citizen” or “all citizens” can do this.
In Idaho and Kentucky, the amendments will insert language into those states’ constitutions stating that “no person who is not a citizen of the United States” may vote.
The passage of the amendments marks the latest chapter in Republicans’ ongoing efforts to make unsubstantiated claims of non-citizen voting central to a broader political strategy.
Former President Donald Trump has long made false claims that noncitizen voting leads to widespread fraud and that Democrats helped migrants enter the country to cast those ballots.
The Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity Campaign also highlighted that noncitizen voting is a danger that it warned could be a source of widespread fraud in the 2024 election.
Additionally, GOP officials in several states have purged or attempted to purge their voter rolls with the goal of removing noncitizens, while House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has pushed legislation that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote to vote.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
