Boxes of ballots wait to be counted at Milwaukee's central count on Election Day 2024. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A Waukesha County judge on Monday issued a temporary partial stay of his ruling in a case over how state election authorities verify the citizenship status of people registering to vote.
The partial stay was issued after the state Department of Justice had requested that Judge Michael Maxwell hold up the entirety of his order pending an appeal. Oral arguments will be held Oct. 31 to determine if the rest of the order should be stayed.
Maxwell ruled Friday that the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Department of Transportation have a duty to match citizenship records with the state’s voter registration system to determine that non-citizens are not registering to vote. In his order, he also required that state and local election officials stop accepting new voter registrations without checking citizenship status and that the parties in the lawsuit meet to determine a plan for checking the existing voter rolls for non-citizen voters.
The Monday order that partially stayed the decision put a pause on the halt to accepting voter registrations.
DOJ had argued that Maxwell’s order would require a “massive overhaul” of the state’s voter registration system and take months to implement, that the ruling doesn’t make clear what the citizen verification requirement actually entails and potentially violates state law requiring the elections commission to maintain the electronic voter registration system.
Non-citizens are not allowed to vote. Current law requires that people seeking to register to vote attest under penalty of imprisonment that they are U.S. citizens. In Wisconsin, immigrants without legal documentation are unable to obtain a driver’s license and a state-issued photo ID is required to register to vote.
Despite little evidence that non-citizen voters are casting ballots in large numbers, the issue has been repeatedly raised by Republicans in recent years — particularly since President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and among Republicans who are already skeptical of the election system as a whole.
A judge ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission to verify the citizenship of all voters in time for the next election in February, and determine whether any noncitizens are registered. (Photo by Alex Shur / Votebeat)
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
A Waukesha County judge on Friday ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission to determine whether any noncitizens are registered to vote and to stop accepting voter registrations without verifying that the applicant is a U.S. citizen.
What’s the dispute?
A Pewaukee resident, represented by conservative attorneys, filed a lawsuit last year seeking to require the election commission to verify citizenship of registered voters and applicants. The suit also sought to force the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to compare its citizenship information against voter rolls.
The election commission opposed the initial request, saying that no state law called for requiring documented proof of citizenship. It also argued that the DOT has no obligation to match citizenship data with voter records.
Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Maxwell rejected the commission’s argument, saying that the agency is failing in its duty to ensure that only lawful voters make it to the voter roll. He cited several statutes that he said made clear that only citizens could cast a ballot.
Maxwell didn’t specify how the election commission and local clerks should verify citizenship of new registrants, or how the commission should check for noncitizens on the voter rolls. He only called for the parties to figure out a plan, whether that be through matching the DOT’s citizenship data or using “other lawfully available means.” He called for that process to be substantially completed before the next statewide election, which is February.
Currently, applicants for voter registration in Wisconsin and most other states must attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, but they are not required to present proof of citizenship.
Republicans praised the decision, with state Rep. Amanda Nedweski calling it a “great win for election integrity.”
Democrats and the respondents in the case were largely mum.
Election commission spokesperson Emilee Miklas didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Riley Vetterkind, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which represents the commission and Department of Transportation, declined to say whether the agencies would appeal the decision.
Who are the parties?
The current plaintiffs, Pewaukee resident Ardis Cerny and Waukesha resident Annette Kuglitsch, sued the election commission, Department of Transportation, and officials in both agencies. They have argued that the election commission is violating their voting rights by not checking for noncitizens already registered to vote and seeking to vote.
Maxwell agreed, saying they “have a clear legal right to not have their votes diluted by a non-citizen casting an unlawful ballot.”
What happens now?
It’s unclear how the commission would verify the citizenship of all of Wisconsin’s registered voters by February. Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, said the decision will “definitely be appealed” and that the lower-court decision could be stayed while the appeal goes through the courts.
If the case reaches the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the liberal majority could overturn the order of the conservative-leaning Waukesha County Circuit Court.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
Assembly Republican and Democratic authors announced competing bills at a joint press conference last week. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin lawmakers are once again trying to make changes to the state’s elections system, including allowing elections clerks to start processing absentee ballots the day before Election Day, though partisan divisions on how the changes should be made are already showing.
Assembly Republican and Democratic authors announced competing bills at a joint press conference last week, saying they are starting a conversation around the proposals and aim to get them done this session. It’s unclear whether those conversations will end in new laws ahead of the 2026 elections, which will include a spring Supreme Court election, a high-profile, open race for governor and state legislative races where control is up for grabs.
“There’s not a lot new in here,” Assistant Majority Leader Scott Krug (R-Rome) said. “We’ve gone through a lot of these things before, but we’re here to talk about things that should matter to every Wisconsinite, whether you’re Republican, Democrat or independent, about having faith and confidence in your elections from the beginning of the process all the way through to the end.”
Krug said his proposals would help ensure three things for voters: the “person who’s voting next to them is who they say they are,” that the “person is eligible to vote” and that they know “who won the damn election before they go to bed.”
One bill, Krug said, would take a “comprehensive look at how we approach absentee voting in the state of Wisconsin.” This would include allowing for processing of absentee ballots to start on the Monday before Election Day and regulating drop boxes in Wisconsin.
“Absentee voting is here to stay, so we want to make sure that we include a process where we can actually get these results across the finish line before we go to bed,” Krug said. He added that by pairing the issue with drop boxes regulations in his new bill he hopes it will “draw all legislators to the table.”
Election clerks have called for change for years. Currently in Wisconsin, elections workers aren’t allowed to start processing absentee ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. This has led to extended processing times, especially in the larger cities including Milwaukee — bolstering suspicions among Republicans since 2018 about late night “ballot dumps” in Democratic cities.
Despite passing the Assembly, a bill to implement Monday processing died last legislative session due to opposition in the Senate.
In addition to reviving Monday processing, Krug promoted new standards for drop boxes.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed a decision that had banned drop boxes in Wisconsin until the new ruling in July 2024. Some Republicans, though not Krug, were critical of the decision.
“People who are in our communities who see drop boxes on the corner want to know if they have security, that they have standards, that they’re being used the same across the state of Wisconsin,” Krug said. “I know we don’t all agree on what those provisions and those standards should be, but we’ll have a good conversation about that.”
Another bill, Krug said, would eliminate the “ballot drawdown” process from Wisconsin statute and replace it with a process known as “risk-limiting audits.” The drawdown is used when there is a numerical discrepancy and as a result a ballot may be randomly selected and removed from the vote count.
“Clerical errors can lead to an actually legal ballot being tossed out,” Krug said. “We’ve got to get rid of the drawdown.”
Risk limiting audits are a statistically based audit technique, which audits a certain number of ballots depending on the margin of victory in a given election, has been growing in popularity in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The bill language for Krug’s first two bills is not available.
Krug said AB 312, which was introduced earlier this year, is also included in his package. The bill would require absentee voting sites to be open for at least 20 hours during the period for voting absentee in-person.
“There’s going to be a limited number of session days going into the fall and spring,” Krug said, adding that it could be difficult to get “27 or 30 election bills” across the finish line individually.
“Time is of the essence,” Krug said for getting the changes done before 2026 fall elections.
While the lawmakers held their press conference jointly, Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) said she is not currently supportive of Krug’s bills but that having the conversation is important.
“I think it’s over bloated,” Snodgrass said about Krug’s “Monday processing” proposal. “I’d like to see a cleaner bill.”
“We are meeting the moment. Our country, and our state has never been more divided and more contentious. The partisan divide has become not just contentious, but even hostile,” Snodgrass said, adding that she and Krug want to “model that civil conversations in debate can happen in the same room, from the same podium and with the same goal in mind despite diverging ideas.”
Senate Democrat critical of Krug’s legislation
In addition to Assembly Democrats not being on board with Republican election proposals, there already appear to be some obstacles in the Senate.
While speaking to reporters after the Assembly press conference, Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) criticized Krug’s Monday processing proposal, saying he was “very disappointed” with the new version as it contains a “poison pills” meant to satisfy the right-wing portion of his party.
Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) criticized Krug’s Monday processing proposal, saying he was “very disappointed” with the new version as it contains a “poison pills” meant to satisfy the right-wing portion of his party. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
“The Monday processing concept has always been a good idea on its own merits, but it’s never been about the right to vote. It has always been about efficiencies for our clerks and our election officials to process ballots more smoothly,” Spreitzer said. “None of those things are about voting rights, and I’m not willing to trade those things for undermining people’s voting rights.”
Spreitzer said the dropbox restrictions are “nonstarters” that would “functionally ban them in most communities.” A bill draft, according to VoteBeat, includes a ban on clerks fixing errors on ballots and guidelines for dropboxes, including where to place them, how to secure them, how to collect ballots and how to keep records of when they’re emptied as well as requiring they be under a continuous, livestreamed video feed.
“I don’t know where these ideas are coming from, but it’s got to be from the extreme part of the Republican caucus, and I just don’t think these are what we should be putting forward related to our elections,” Spreitzer said.
Spreitzer said Monday processing may not happen until Democrats have control, given the recent version of the bill.
“It may mean that we need to wait for a Democratic majority to pass this,” Spreitzer said. Senate Republicans currently hold a 17-15 majority. Democrats are hoping to change that in 2026 and need to win at least two additional seats to flip control of the chamber for the first time in over 15 years.
Waiting would delay any changes to 2027 at the earliest.
Democratic bills
Snodgrass, alongside three of her Assembly Democratic colleagues, introduced proposals that have overlapping goals with Krug’s legislation last week.
Snodgrass said the Democratic package is meant to focus on “strengthening our democracy” by increasing access, educating people and providing the resources necessary to ensure that all eligible electors can vote. She said they specifically want to remove barriers to voting, not impose them.
One bill would require elected state officials to serve as poll workers during their first term and once every three years after that to help increase their understanding of the state’s election administration.
“There’s no better way of learning than doing so,” Snodgrass said, adding that the bill would help elected officials be a “voice to talk about how Wisconsin’s elections are secure.”
A pair of bills seek to ensure that polling places and voting are more accessible by requiring that election officials have one hour of voter accessibility training, and requiring election officials use the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s accessibility checklist at each polling place and uniform signs with instructions for curbside voting. Several of the bills focus on helping young people in the state participate in elections.
One bill would require that at least one special school registration deputy be present at each public high school in the state so eligible students can register to vote at school during the day. One bill would require high schools to give voter registration forms and nonpartisan voting information to students who are eligible to vote.
The Department of Public Instruction would be required, under one bill, to develop a curriculum on the electoral process and voting. The agency would also have to mandate at least one hour of voter education instruction annually for K-12 students.
“Too often, young people want to get involved, but don’t know how,” Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) said. “By making voter registration and civic information part of the high school experience, we eliminate barriers and send a clear message, your voice matters, and your vote counts. This bill is not about partisanship. It’s about participation. It’s about preparing students to step confidently into adulthood, not just as graduates, but as citizens ready to shape their communities and their future.”
The package also includes a constitutional amendment proposal that would allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be 18 by the general election. Another bill would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote if they turn 18 before the next election.
Ed Gordon, Maxine Waters, Jennifer McClellan, Rev. Shavon Arline-Bradley, and Marc H. Morial speak onstage during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation annual Legislative Conference National Town Hall at Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Sept. 25, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Congressional Black Caucus Foundation)
When Black voters stay home on election day, the results have major consequences, according to Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League.
Morial implored attendees at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference Thursday to eschew the myth that their vote does not matter.
Black voter turnout was more than 65% in 2008 when Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama became the first African American president. Turnout was similar when Obama won reelection four years later. And Democratic nominee Joe Biden also enjoyed Black voter participation of 64% during his campaign in 2020.
But in 2016, when Republican Donald Trump won his first presidential term, Black voter participation dropped to 59%. It remained the same last year when Trump won a second term against former Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black woman who was the Democratic nominee.
Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League (Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Congressional Black Caucus Foundation)
“We need to understand that in this country, politics and elections matter, and all this bulls— about politics and elections do not matter is the formula of these suppression campaigns,” Morial said. “We’ve got to not get caught in yesterday’s strategies and agenda and bring something new.”
With more than 100 panels and sessions, the state of democracy and federal actions impacting diversity, equity and inclusion policies, elections and voting rights was top of mind for conference attendees.
U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) said she took time out during a trip to the National African American Museum of History and Culture with her children this year to reflect on the sacrifices made for the right to vote, among other things.
“If that means that I have to give my life so that theirs [her children] can come true, so be it,” she said. “We all need to accept that this is a pivotal moment.”
Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.). (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
Panelists discussed the mistrust, misinformation and unpredictability in Washington, D.C. and around the country.
Years ahead of the decennial census, Trump has pressed Republican-led state legislatures to redraw congressional districts in an attempt to hold the slim GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives during midterm elections in 2026. Several states, including Texas, Indiana and Ohio are discussing the issue.
Meanwhile, Missouri lawmakers recently passed a newly gerrymandered map of the state’s eight districts that Gov. Mike Kehoe has said he will sign this weekend. The change could give Republicans an advantage in a district held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat.
The NAACP challenged the process in court before the new map was approved. Other lawsuits seek to void the map because the Missouri constitution requires lawmakers to draw districts every 10 years after the census.
“The legislature rushed through a mid-decade redraw pushed by Donald Trump himself,” said U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Mo.), who co-hosted a panel on the judiciary. “Not because Missouri has asked for it, but because he knows he can’t win fairly.
Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Mo.). (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
“We need independent, transparent processes that put people before politics, and we need to stay organized because Trump and his allies are relentless, so we must be too,” Bell said.
Panelists acknowledged it will be difficult for Democrats to make substantial changes right now with Congress controlled by Republicans and the U.S. Supreme Court holding a 6-3 conservative advantage.
But the one constant mentioned dozens of times during the discussion: People should vote.
Christopher Bruce, policy and advocacy director for the ACLU of Georgia, said the proof lies in the numbers with about 90 million people who didn’t vote in last year’s election.
“If you are not in this democracy, what happens? Literally…it becomes a dictatorship,” Bruce said. “The democracy is set up for you to win. The question is, do you want to have that power to make this happen? And if you don’t, the people are going to take away your life all together.”
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) told attendees they have a responsibility to vote because of the blood spilled by their Black ancestors for that opportunity, which helped secure the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It paved the way for the election of 62 Black congressional caucus members as well as 50 Latinos and 20 Asians.
“We have a responsibility, an obligation, to make sure that we do exactly what they did. They marched on,” Green said. “The battle is not over. Yes, we are comfortable. Yes, we have nice cars, but don’t confuse comfort with liberty. Don’t confuse it with liberation. Don’t confuse it with freedom.”
This story was originally produced by News From The States, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in a 2021 video promoting the partisan review of the 2020 election. (Screenshot/Office of the Special Counsel YouTube channel)
Former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s license to practice law in Wisconsin should be suspended for three years, a third-party referee wrote, agreeing with the state Office of Lawyer Regulation’s allegations that he violated standards for professional conduct during his much-maligned review of the 2020 presidential election.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will have the final say in the matter, a Court spokesperson said Friday.
The suspension recommendation marks the conclusion of Gableman’s effort to fight attempts to hold him accountable for his conduct during the election investigation. The OLR found that while working on behalf of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to look into alleged wrongdoing during the election, Gableman lied to a Waukesha County judge about conversations he had with other attorneys, lied to an Assembly committee, deliberately violated state open records laws, used his agreement with Vos to pursue his own political interests, violated his duty of confidentiality to his client and lied in an affidavit to the OLR as it was investigating him.
Gableman’s investigation ultimately cost the state more than $2.3 million without finding any evidence to confirm President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud during the 2020 election.
The review also helped further fan the flames of election conspiracy theories in the state. Those beliefs have remained prominent among segments of the state Republican Party’s base nearly five years after the election.
After fighting the allegations against him, Gableman ultimately reached an agreement with the OLR and stipulated that the allegations in the complaint against him were true.
In his report the referee, James Winiarski, wrote that the consequences for Gableman’s actions must be severe.
“A high level of discipline is needed to protect the public, the courts and the legal system from repetition of Attorney Gableman’s misconduct by Attorney Gableman or any other attorneys,” Winiarski wrote. “His misconduct was very public in nature and involved many members of the public and employees of several municipalities.”
This report has been updated to clarify that the Wisconsin Supreme Court will make the final decision on the referee’s recommendation.
A voter deposits a mail-in ballot in a drop box in Chester County, Pa., on Nov. 5, 2024. The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday it is suing Pennsylvania and five other states that have refused to turn over detailed voter roll data demanded by federal attorneys earlier this year. (Photo by Peter Hall/Pennsylvania Capital-Star)
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday it is suing six states — California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — that have refused to turn over detailed voter roll data demanded by federal attorneys earlier this year.
The Justice Department has reached out to more than half the states in recent months for voter lists, and has indicated it plans to contact all of them. Some of the requests vary in detail, but in general they ask for voter information on millions of Americans, including personal data such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
Some states have released only publicly available data or invited DOJ attorneys to make public records requests. Others have refused outright. Indiana last week became the first known state to have provided sensitive personal data.
Under the Constitution, states are responsible for administering elections, and some state election officials have said they are barred by state law from handing over the information the Justice Department has demanded. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security this month confirmed it had received data from the Justice Department and would use it unearth “illegal aliens.”
The Trump administration also is developing a powerful data tool that it says will help states prevent noncitizens from voting, which is extremely rare.
The lawsuits have been filed in the federal districts of the respective states. They argue that the federal government is privy to the data under two federal laws, the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), that were passed “to ensure that states have proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs,” the Justice Department said in a news release.
“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in a statement announcing the lawsuits. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
American flags hang alongside the official agency flag at the U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., in August. The Justice Department is sharing state voter roll data with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
(Photo by Jonathan Shorman/Stateline)
The U.S. Department of Justice is sharing state voter roll information with the Department of Homeland Security in a search for noncitizens, the Trump administration confirmed.
The data sharing comes after Justice Department attorneys this summer demanded that election officials in nearly two dozen states turn over their voter lists, alarming some Democratic state secretaries of state and election experts. They have voiced fears about how the Trump administration planned to use the data. Even some Republican secretaries of state have declined to provide their full voter lists.
Homeland Security in an unsigned statement to Stateline called information sharing essential to “scrub aliens from voter rolls” and said the federal government was “finally doing what it should have all along — sharing information to solve problems.”
“This collaboration with the DOJ will lawfully and critically enable DHS to prevent illegal aliens from corrupting our republic’s democratic process and further ensure the integrity of our elections nationwide. Elections exist for the American people to choose their leaders, not illegal aliens,” the statement reads.
The Justice Department said in its own statement that state voter roll data provided in response to requests from the department’s Civil Rights Division is “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
Noncitizen voting is extremely rare. One study of the 2016 election placed the prevalence of noncitizen voting at 0.0001% of votes cast.
The data sharing marks a next step in President Donald Trump’s efforts to exert more federal influence over state-administered elections. Trump signed an executive order earlier this year that sought to require individuals to provide proof-of-citizenship documents to register to vote, a rule quickly blocked in federal court. He has also threatened to sign another executive order attempting to restrict mail ballots.
At least 10 states have either provided publicly available data or given the department directions on how to request public data. On Friday, Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales, a Republican, confirmed to reporters that he had provided the Justice Department with all voter information requested, including driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers — making Indiana the first known state to have supplied personally sensitive data.
While the administration didn’t describe how Homeland Security will use the voter rolls to search for noncitizens, the agency operates a powerful program, Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, that can identify the immigration or citizenship status of an individual.
SAVE was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of Homeland Security, this spring refashioned it into a platform that can scan states’ voter rolls if officials upload the data.
In the past, SAVE could only search one name at a time. Now it can conduct bulk searches, allowing officials to potentially feed into it information on millions of registered voters. SAVE checks that information against a series of federal databases and reports back whether it can verify someone’s immigration status.
Since May, it also can draw upon Social Security data, transforming the program into a tool that can confirm U.S. citizenship because Social Security records for many, but not all, Americans include the information.
As the Justice Department has sought state voter rolls this summer, letters from the department’s attorneys to state officials in many instances have demanded full lists of registered voters that include sensitive personal information such as driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. At least 22 states were asked for some data, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which is tracking the requests.
Some states have turned over publicly available voter files or offered directions on how to request them. Others have flat-out refused the requests.
“The Department of Justice hasn’t shown any good reason for its fishing expedition for sensitive voter information on every American,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said in a news release Monday announcing that her office had rejected the Justice Department’s second request for her state’s voter data.
Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said that he has no confidence that Homeland Security would act carefully with any data received.
Levitt, speaking with Stateline on Wednesday before the data sharing was confirmed, voiced concern that the Justice Department was “serving as a stalking horse” for other entities within the government.
“The fact that they’re having to sneak through the back door rather than knocking on the front door tells you that there’s improper procedures going on,” Levitt said.
This story was updated to add information from Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales confirming his state shared voter roll information with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Whitney Downard contributed reporting. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
The federal government’s demands that states turn over their voter rolls and related information highlights long-standing conflicts over how to ensure that only eligible voters are registered without endangering voting rights.
The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to several states — and plans to send many more — asking them for copies of their voter lists and for detailed information about how they maintain them. The department has said it’s seeking to enforce requirements in federal law that President Donald Trump has ordered it to prioritize.
It has already sued North Carolina, alleging that the state has not been properly verifying voter identity, and sued Orange County, California, for refusing to provide full records for 17 people who have been removed from the rolls in connection with a probe of potential noncitizen voting. And it has threatened to sue or withhold federal funding from other states if they do not comply with their requests for information.
Everyone agrees that a “clean” voter list — cleared of people who have died or moved out of the jurisdiction, or who otherwise aren’t eligible to vote — is good practice. But they differ on how aggressively election officials should move to remove potentially ineligible voters, what exactly federal law requires election officials to do, and how to balance election security with the risk of wrongly removing and disenfranchising eligible voters.
Rhetoric and false claims can make the debate harder to follow. Here’s a guide to understanding the issues and arguments.
What does the law require?
There are two key federal laws that govern the maintenance of voter rolls.
The National Voter Registration Act requires election officials to make a “reasonable effort” to remove voters who become ineligible to vote because they move or die, a process known as list maintenance. The Help America Vote Act, enacted about a decade later, requires states to use a computerized statewide list of every registered voter and assign them a unique identification number. It also requires them to remove duplicated names.
Beyond that, it’s up to state and local governments to set their own policies for how and when to perform list maintenance, and it’s up to federal courts to decide what is “reasonable.” That term isn’t defined in the law, and it’s often where voting rights groups and advocates for stricter list maintenance disagree.
In a recent case in Michigan, for example, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state’s actions to remove the names of thousands of dead voters from the rolls were sufficient, even though the plaintiff, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, claimed to have identified thousands more on the rolls.
Logan Churchwell, research director at the foundation, said in an interview that the court’s decision amounted to giving Michigan an “E for effort.” He said his organization believes there should be a higher standard that would reduce the risk of fraud and administrative error.
For her part, Lata Nott, director of voting rights policy for Campaign Legal Center, said the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement for a “reasonable effort” at maintaining lists is designed to set a floor, but it doesn’t prevent states from creating extreme policies that lead to eligible voters being mistakenly removed.
What is the central issue in the debate?
The main disagreement is over how aggressive list maintenance should be. A recent congressional hearing highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicans on this question.
House Republicans claimed dirty voter rolls enable fraud and said ensuring that only eligible voters are on the list increases election security and voter confidence. They dismissed the idea that their efforts are meant to purge certain types of eligible voters from the rolls, such as people of color.
“This is not and should never be a partisan issue,” said Rep. Laurel Lee, a Florida Republican and former secretary of state. “Maintaining accurate voter rolls is fundamental to election security and public trust.”
House Democrats made it clear that they, too, don’t want ineligible voters, such as dead people or noncitizens, on the list. But they questioned why Republicans would want to take any actions that could potentially disenfranchise eligible people, citing recentincidents of state list maintenance actions that led to eligible voters being removed.
“What we do want is every eligible voter gets the chance to vote and their constitutional rights are not infringed upon,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, a Texas Democrat. “And that seems to be a huge distinction.”
Why is it hard to keep voter rolls updated?
It is difficult partly because of the decentralized nature of voting.
The U.S. doesn’t have a national database of eligible voters or citizens. Under federal law, states maintain their own lists. They assign voters the ID number that’s required under the Help America Vote Act, but that number doesn’t have to be connected to any existing federal identification, such as a Social Security number.
To remove voters who were eligible, but aren’t anymore, election officials must have ways to find out when a voter dies, moves to another state, is convicted of a felony, or otherwise becomes ineligible to cast a ballot.
Many election officials get data on address changes from their state’s motor vehicle department and the U.S. Postal Service and get death reports from state and federal agencies. Some states allow or mandate the use of other sources, such as obituaries and responses to jury duty summonses.
But there are potential gaps and time lags in these systems. When people move, for example, they don’t often tell the election office for their old address to remove them from the rolls.
It’s fairly easy for officials to track in-state moves because people carry the same state-assigned voter ID number when they go to register in a new location in the state. But it’s harder for officials to find out when someone moves out of state. That requires coordination between states, or more detailed searches through government records.
Many states are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a consortium that collects state voter roll data and alerts its members to potentially duplicate registrations across state lines. But two of the largest states, California and New York, are not members. And several Republican states have withdrawn from ERIC in recent years, citing concernsabout the program, including about how the organization shares some of its data with researchers.
Do some states have more registered voters than residents?
Statistics like this are often used to back up claims of voter fraud or poor state practices. But there’s a legitimate explanation for this that’s tied to federal and state laws.
In some instances, state laws allow election officials to remove voters from the rolls quickly, such as when they die, or if they respond to a jury duty summons by saying they are not a U.S. citizen.
But when a state finds out a voter may have moved, federal law requires election officials to send a confirmation mailing before removing that person from the rolls. If the voter doesn’t respond, they remain on the roll of registered voters, but are moved to the “inactive” list, and their names must stay there for two federal election cycles before they are removed, unless the state hears from them.
That four-year wait, and a large number of voters on the inactive list, can make the voter roll appear bloated at any given time.
But another reason for the disparity is that population estimates themselves are imprecise, said Chris Fowler, a professor of geography and demography at Penn State University who studies voter rolls and census data.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey is currently our best measure of population changes from year to year, Fowler said. But the uncertainty in the national population count is about 10 million residents, he said — roughly equal to the population of Michigan.
Some use the disparities between the numbers to cast doubt on the accuracy of elections and raise alarm about voter fraud, such as Elon Musk with his misleading claim that Michigan had “more registered voters than eligible citizens.” His numbers included inactive voters as if they were eligible voters. But before those voters could cast a ballot, they would have to correct their voting record to prove eligibility, most commonly by showing documentation proving they still live in the jurisdiction.
How ‘dirty’ are the voter rolls?
Some of the most cited data available on this comes from more than a decade ago and has helped inspire efforts at improvement since then. But those efforts have run into challenges.
In 2012, a research study by the Pew Center on the States found that more than 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state, and there were more than 1.8 million dead people whose names were still on the voter rolls. These and other findings “underscore the need for states to improve accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency,” Pew said.
There have been multiple attempts to create systems allowing states to share data to help with voter list maintenance. That’s a difficult task because any such effort must comply with state and federal laws governing data use and privacy. Officials must also cross-check data from various sources, using enough different data points to ensure that the matches are accurate and that a person with the same name as another isn’t mistakenly removed as a duplicate.
One prior program, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, was ultimately shut down under a court settlement because it did not do enough to protect sensitive voter data. It was also found to be highly inaccurate, often incorrectly identifying registrations as duplicates because of poor matching techniques.
After Pew’s study, the nonprofit provided funding to help launch ERIC, to try to screen out duplicate voter registrations across state lines. Since then, ERIC has helped states identify hundreds of thousands of voters each year who have moved across state lines, and tens of thousands of voters who died. But in part because some Republican states have left the program, only half of states now participate, leaving a lot of gaps.
Some states use more data sources and perform checks more frequently than others. In the latest federal survey of election officials, for example, about 30% of states said they do not use National Change of Address reports from the U.S. Postal Service or data from motor vehicle agencies to identify potentially ineligible voters.
Do poorly maintained voter rolls allow for more fraud?
Generally speaking, removing voters who have moved prevents them from wrongly voting in their old voting jurisdiction, and removing a voter who has died prevents another person from fraudulently casting a ballot in their name.
That said, prosecutions for double voting and voting for others are rare, and Votebeat could not find any studies showing that states that do a better job of cleaning voter rolls have less voter fraud.
The Heritage Foundation’s database of voter fraud across all states since 1982 includes 174 convictions for duplicate voting, 99 cases of noncitizen voting, and two cases of someone voting under a dead person’s name.
But Churchwell, of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said the number of prosecutions does not properly measure how much fraud occurs. Rather, he said, it indicates the state’s propensity to prosecute. “I doubt you’ll find research showing where a state is simultaneously terrible at list maintenance yet zealous with prosecutions,” he said.
Are there noncitizens on the voter rolls?
Yes, but states that have looked have not found them in large numbers.
Audits in multiple states have found small numbers of noncitizens on the rolls, few of whom had actually cast ballots, and there are no known instances of noncitizens voting in large enough numbers to influence the outcome of an election.
The threat of noncitizen voting has become a prominent talking point for Republicans, driving their efforts to pass proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters. But even in Republican-led states, officials who have recently tried to find noncitizens on the rolls have reported only small numbers.
In an audit last year, for example, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office found 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters. Nine of them had voted in prior elections, the office found. In Ohio, only one of the 641 cases of noncitizen voting that Secretary of State Frank LaRose referred for prosecution resulted in a voter fraud charge.
In Texas, which has more than 18.6 million registered voters, the Secretary of State’s Office identified 581 noncitizens from 2021 to August of 2024. The state referred 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the 2024 election to the attorney general for investigation. The state also is investigating potential cases from the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.
In Arizona, which requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, Jesse Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University, identified at least 2,331 registered voters who he believes are highly likely to be noncitizens. He studied the state’s voter rolls as an expert defense witness for a case challenging the state’s proof of citizenship laws. Richman said those people could have become naturalized citizens since last updating their license, but the ID they used when registering to vote or updating their registration was a noncitizen ID.
On Aug. 28, the U.S. Justice Department announced the indictment of a Canadian citizen charged with registering to vote and voting in federal elections in North Carolina in 2022 and 2024.
Are there dead people on the voter rolls?
Yes, there are voters who have died but whose names are still on the rolls.
But claims about the number of such voters often turn out to be inaccurate.
In 2012, for example, South Carolina’s State Election Commission reviewed 207 cases that the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles had referred to as potential cases of ballots being cast in the names of dead voters. Of those, the commission was able to conclude that 197 did not involve dead voters — instead, they were either clerical errors or identified through bad matches. There wasn’t enough information on the remaining 10 cases to make any determination.
States that are members of ERIC receive reports about voters who may have died while out of state, and the service has identified about 644,000 voters who died over the last 13 years and whose names needed to be removed from the list. But some state laws may limit how states use that information.
Pennsylvania, for example, is an ERIC member, but state law allows officials to remove the names of dead voters only if they learn of it through the state’s health agency or an obituary. Election officials in the state, including Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, have advocated for that to change.
Can list maintenance measures lead to eligible voters being purged?
Yes. In Texas, some of the people removed from the rolls last year were eligible citizens who did not respond to a mailed notice seeking more information about their status, an investigation by Votebeat, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found.
And that’s the concern that voting rights advocates have about states that take aggressive steps to clean their lists, especially close to an election. Two of the most recent cases were in Alabama and Virginia, just before the November 2024 election.
This is why federal law has safeguards on when states can remove potentially ineligible voters, such as the rule that election officials cannot conduct systematic voter removals within 90 days of an election, Nott with Campaign Legal Center said.
“The more aggressive your list maintenance laws are,” she said, “the more likely you are probably going to be purging people who are eligible to vote.”
Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat‘s newsletters here.
Seizing on that assertion — despite there being no credible evidence to support it — Trump promised on Truth Social to “lead a movement” to phase out mail‑in ballots and voting machines and promote “watermark paper.” He suggested he would implement these changes with an executive order ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The post contains many other false, misleading or unsubstantiated statements about the use of mail ballots, including claims Trump and his allies have made before — even as more Republican officials have tried to encourage voting by mail.
His claims notwithstanding, courts have repeatedly rejected allegations of widespread fraud tied to mail ballots, and many democracies around the world use them. And under the Constitution, he has no explicit authority over the “time, place and manner” of elections. Experts say that an executive order like the one Trump describes in his post would be immediately challenged in court and unlikely to take effect.
Beyond that, any major change to voting by mail before the 2026 midterms would be a logistical nightmare for election administrators, and it would disproportionately affect voters who rely on it most, including overseas service members, veterans and people with disabilities.
Here’s a fact check of some of the key claims in his post.
What Trump said:
“States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them.”
Fact:
Trump’s claim that states are “merely an agent” of the federal government in elections is false, and contrary to decades of Republican orthodoxy on this point.
Meanwhile, Republicans for decades have framed states’ rights as a fundamental principle. This stretches back to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, through Ronald Reagan’s emphasis on “federalism,” and into recent decades where GOP leaders have framed decentralization of power as protection against “big government.”
Voting has been a primary example for that very point.
For example, after the contentious 2000 presidential election, Republicans fiercely defended Florida’s right to set its own recount rules. GOP leaders and state attorneys general argued in the Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that federal oversight of state election laws was unconstitutional. Over the last decade, Republicans in Congress have opposed Democratic efforts to pass federal voting-rights legislation like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, arguing they represented “federal takeovers” of elections. Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2019 called the legislation “a one-size-fits-all partisan rewrite by one side here in Washington.”
In 2020, when Democrats proposed federal requirements to expand mail voting due to COVID-19, Republicans fought them off. And when Trump floated the idea of delaying the November election, Republican senators like McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio reminded him that Congress and the states control election timing and procedures.
What Trump said:
“We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED”
Fact:
Many democracies use mail voting, including Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia. Some use it more extensively than the U.S. No country has “given it up” because of widespread fraud. Fraud is rare in countries that use vote by mail, as it is here.
Germany has been using vote by mail since the 1950s; in its 2021 federal election, about half of German voters cast their ballots through the mail. In Switzerland, nearly all voters receive their ballots by mail, and more than 70% of voters return them in the same way. The United Kingdom allows any voters to request a mailed ballot, and about 20% of voters take advantage of the policy. The vast majority of European countries allow at least some form of mail voting, especially for citizens living abroad or for those with disabilities.
What Trump said:
Voting machines are “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial” and “cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”
Fact:
Paper ballots still have to be counted — either by hand (which is slow and error-prone) or by machine. That’s why nearly every state that uses paper ballots still relies on scanners to tally them quickly and accurately.
Existing federal law also requires the use of at least one voting machine in every single precinct in the country, for use by voters who have disabilities that make casting a paper ballot difficult. Trump cannot invalidate federal law through an executive order, so voting machines aren’t going anywhere.
Watermarks are not a standard or proven safeguard, though some states do have them (or something like them). The places that use them still use machines to count these ballots.
What Trump said:
“Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”
Fact:
There is no evidence that one party “cheats” with mail ballots. Voting by mail is used by Republicans and Democrats alike, and in jurisdictions led by Republicans and Democrats. In fact, Republican voters are often more likely to use mail voting, especially in states like Arizona and Florida, where Republicans championed the practice until recently. In fact, there’s no evidence that vote by mail benefits either party over the other — multipleacademicstudies have reached this conclusion.
What Trump said:
“ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”
Fact:
Mail‑in voting has consistently been shown to operate extremely securely due to robust safeguards. In states like Pennsylvania, counties that offer ballot curing — the ability to correct errors like missing signatures — report significantly lower rejection rates, demonstrating that the system isn’t rigged, but rather is responsive and adaptable.
Votebeat’s coverage highlights what research studies have shown repeatedly: Instances of fraud in mail-in voting remain exceedingly rare. Even when ballots get rejected, that’s typically due to procedural mistakes — not attempts at manipulation or deceit. Election administrators across the country work under strict, bipartisan protocols, including signature checks and secure handling procedures, to protect integrity. Courts and election officials routinely affirm the reliability of mail ballots when these protocols are followed. In both routine practice and under close scrutiny, mail-in voting stands out as both secure and trustworthy.
What Trump said:
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS…by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
Fact:
Courts have ruled that Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally change federal election rules, as they consider several lawsuits challenging his March executive order.
In halting some provisions of that executive order, for example, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in April that “our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections.” That ruling blocked Trump’s direction to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to take steps to require voters to prove citizenship when registering to vote.
A federal judge in Massachusetts later blocked the same provision of the order, writing that Trump exceeded his authority. That judge also blocked parts of the order telling the U.S. Justice Department to enforce a ballot receipt deadline of Election Day.
Nothing stops Trump from leading an informal movement, however. He’s arguably been doing that for years already, and while it has had some impact on policy, voters haven’t really changed their habits much.
Jen Fifield contributed reporting.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat‘s newsletters here.
A federal appeals court ruled Monday against a Wisconsin town that disavowed electronic voting machines, siding with the U.S. Justice Department’s argument that this would unfairly harm voters with disabilities.
What’s the dispute?
Leaders of Thornapple, a town of 700 people in northern Wisconsin’s Rusk County, voted in 2023 to stop using electronic voting machines, in favor of allowing only hand-marked ballots. They did without the machines for two elections in a row, in April and August 2024.
The DOJ, under the Biden administration, sued the town in September 2024, arguing that its decision violated the Help America Vote Act, which requires every “voting system” to be accessible for voters with disabilities. Accessible voting machines allow voters with disabilities to hear the options on the ballot and use a touch-sensitive device to mark it.
The town argued that it wasn’t subject to the federal law’s accessibility provision because its use of paper ballots didn’t constitute a “voting system.”
A district court judge rejected the town’s argument last September and ordered it to use electronic voting machines for the November presidential election. The town appealed that order, but did use a machine in November.
On Monday, a three-judge panel in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower-court order, finding that “individuals with disabilities would lack the opportunity to vote privately and independently if they only had access to a paper ballot.”
The court based that finding partially on Thornapple Chief Inspector Suzanne Pinnow’s testimony about a blind woman who relied on her daughter’s assistance to fill out a ballot, and a man who had a stroke and who needed Pinnow to guide his hand so he could mark a ballot.
Who are the parties?
The DOJ had sued two northern Wisconsin towns and their officials in September after both decided not to use electronic voting equipment for at least one federal election. One of the towns, Lawrence, immediately settled with the Justice Department, vowing to use accessible voting machines in the future.
Thornapple officials decided to fight the case. They’re currently represented by an attorney with the America First Policy Institute, a group aligned with President Donald Trump.
Why does it matter?
The case reaffirms what has long been election practice in Wisconsin: Every polling place must have an electronic voting machine that anybody can use but is especially beneficial for voters with disabilities.
Distrust of voting machines, which has grown on the right following misinformation about the 2020 election, has led to a movement to ban them across Wisconsin. But the Thornapple case shows that for now, municipalities still have obligations under federal law to allow voters to cast ballots on electronic machines.
The case is relevant nationally, too. Since Trump took office in January, the U.S. Justice Department has withdrawn from multiple voting-related cases. But the Justice Department forged ahead in this lawsuit, signaling that, at least for now, it is not backing the movement to forgo electronic voting equipment entirely.
What happens now?
Thornapple is “considering our options,” said Nick Wanic of the America First Policy Institute. The case could get appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court or proceed in the lower federal court.
Although the order that required Thornapple to use accessible voting machines applied only to the November 2024 election, at this point, two federal courts in this case have ruled that towns must have accessible voting machines for people with disabilities.
“Voters with disabilities already face many barriers in the electoral process, and making sure they have access to a voting system which allows for basic voting rights to be met is a minimum — and legal — standard that they should not be worried about when exercising their right to vote,” said Lisa Hassenstab, public policy manager at Disability Rights Wisconsin.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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