President Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled Friday. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul U.S. elections.
In the US, we have no national ID, and no uniform way to prove citizenship. The easiest way is with a passport, but not everyone has one. Citizens with out a passport need to produce their birth certificate (or naturalization papers) to prove it. Some states have drivers licenses that meet Federal standards for passports and can be used to prove citizenship, but they also issue licenses for non-citizens leading to multiple types of drivers licenses.
Not even the infamous SSN can be used to prove citizenship, because non-citizens with work authorization will get one for tax filing purposes.
Even in the case of the SSN a government agency can do the legwork of determining if that SSN belongs to a citizen. If they’re not a citizen then reject the registration and press charges.
Exactly, the burden is on the government to prove that the application is fraudulent, as it should be. Republican act like this is some sort of loophole, though, that permits millions of non-citizens to vote. That’s simply not the case. A non-citizen who affirms they are a citizen is breaking the law, and making it extremely easy for the government to find them to administer punishment. Even if a non-citizen was looking to subert the government somehow, successfully suberting the process to file a single vote is not the most effective way to do it.
I used to be on the side of “why not have people who register to vote prove their citizenship when registering” until I realized how haphazard that proof is. Your average homeless person probably doesn’t have their birth certificate or passport on them, yet if they are a citizen they have as much right to register as I do.