Let states take the lead on voter verification

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order intended to ensure that only eligible citizens can vote in US elections. While we laud the purpose of the order, a better approach would be to look at how states are using data that they already possess to determine a voter's citizenship, and identify ways that the federal government could provide additional assistance.

- John H. Merrill and Trey Grayso

The executive order mandates that people provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote anywhere in the country, and entrusts a federal agency — the Election Assistance Commission—with implementing the overhaul of the system. Currently, states set their own voting policies, and the Constitution tasks them with administering their own elections. Lawsuits have been filed to block the executive order, and the likelihood of a successful implementation of the order after it has been completely adjudicated is extremely low.

The White House said in a fact sheet that the order would “protect the integrity of American elections” by strengthening voter citizenship verification and ending “foreign interference in our election process.” In practice, however, the order has the potential to create numerous unfunded mandates that election workers would be forced to contend with, and the possibility of creating other unintended consequences.

As conservative Republicans and former secretaries of state responsible for administering elections in two Southern states, we have seen this dynamic play out in real time. Our experience has taught us that, thankfully, noncitizen voting is rare — it is already illegal in federal elections and is only authorised in a few local jurisdictions.

But there is still much that can be done to ensure that it stays low. Those who are interested in getting the citizenship issue right can look to the states for promising pathways forward. What these efforts have in common is that they put the onus on state officials to ensure that rolls are free of noncitizens, rather than relying on people registering to vote to prove their citizenship. To date, there is no mechanism in place to easily allow states and local jurisdictions to confirm citizenship.