Ballot measures prohibiting noncitizen voting passed by strong majorities in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin on Tuesday.
Noncitizens are explicitly barred from participating in federal elections. But Republicans behind these measures say the extra restrictions are necessary to close any potential loopholes that could allow noncitizens to vote — often citing unsubstantiated claims that noncitizens are already voting in significant numbers or that Democrats intend to open up voting to noncitizens to boost their electoral chances.
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“Wisconsin elections will be decided by U.S. citizens, not far-left activists who would turn the ballot box into a petri dish for extremist policies,” Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming said in a statement.
Despite data indicating that it is extremely rare, the campaign to ban noncitizen voting has gained significant steam within the GOP in recent years. Earlier this year, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson briefly tried to leverage a potential government shutdown to get a nationwide ban on noncitizen voting passed by Congress, but ultimately abandoned the effort.
Opponents of these bans argue that they’re little more than a pretense to make it harder to vote.
“False claims of non-citizen voting are being used throughout the country to enact more onerous voter identification requirements, limitations on voter assistance in languages other than English, and attempts to spread misinformation about voting,” the Wisconsin branch of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a statement ahead of Election Day.
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