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A colorful illustration of a city hall, with red tape over its front doors. The top of the roof mimics a vote-by-mail drop-off box, with a completed ballot halfway into it.
Melanie Lambrick

Is Noncitizen Voting Actually a Non-Issue?

Why you should pay attention to the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment this election.

This article is a part of Down-Ballot, a weeklong series highlighting state measures worth watching in the 2024 United States election.

As voters around the United States prepare for a tight presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, they will also have to make pivotal decisions on ballot referendums in their respective states. In Wisconsin, one of the questions this year revolves around noncitizen voting. 

Noncitizen voting is illegal at the state and federal level in the U.S. On voter registration forms, people must sign under the penalty of perjury that they are a citizen, facing punishment of fines, imprisonment, or deportation if they are not. But on a local scale, noncitizen voting is allowed in some cities and towns in Vermont, California, and Maryland, allowing residents to cast a vote in school board and city council elections. 

At this time, there are no elections in Wisconsin that allow for noncitizen voting. Wisconsin previously allowed noncitizen voting in 1848, but that was disallowed by 1912. In a ballot initiative on deck for Nov. 5, however, a coalition of Wisconsin Republicans are seeking to change language in the state’s constitution around citizen voting, making it as explicit as possible that noncitizens cannot vote in any election in Wisconsin. 

Currently, the state’s constitution reads “every United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district who may vote in an election for national, state, or local office or at a statewide or local referendum.” The referendum, however, would change the language to “only a United States citizen age 18 or older who resides in an election district may vote in an election for national, state, or local office or at a statewide or local referendum.”

A yes vote for the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment would allow the language change and a no vote would prevent any changes to the constitution. 

Behind the bill

There are 14 Wisconsin state senators and 41 state representatives behind the push to pass this referendum, an effort which began in September of 2023

While several members of the Wisconsin Legislature did not reply to requests for interviews, Sen. Julian Bradley, a Republican among the coalition that introduced the ballot measure, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that their goal is to make it extremely difficult for noncitizens to ever have an opportunity to vote in Wisconsin. He also said he wants less room for interpretation around the law. 

“If you want to vote in elections, then you have to declare your citizenship, and you have to go through the process,” he told the Sentinel.

However, Debra Cronmiller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, says the initiative is unnecessary and could foster misinformation. The league was one of 30 organizations that has endorsed a no-vote on the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment and also released a toolkit with information about the ballot. 

“It creates an opportunity to suggest, imply, whatever word you want to insert there, that this is a problem. This is not a problem. That’s been documented time and time again,” she says. “It makes me wonder, is the real motivation here not to change the constitution to prohibit noncitizens from voting in municipal races, but is it to fuel a conversation that is more about us and them, who should have the rights and who shouldn’t have the rights.”

Cronmiller compared the Wisconsin Citizenship Voting Requirement Amendment to a 2011 push by Republicans in Wisconsin to require voter IDs during elections. She said that on its surface, both sound good: ensuring that only citizens of Wisconsin are voting in elections. But she also pointed out the unintended consequences of these policies. In the case of voter IDs, not everyone has a driver’s license or works for the state or is a member of a tribal community. And in 2017, the Associated Press reported that the law ultimately turned eligible voters away as a result. 

“There’s too many people who were unnecessarily disenfranchised because of what sounded like a good idea,” she says. “We suspect [the same] in this instance, where only a citizen should vote sounds good, but the constitution actually already guarantees that.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, a six-member board created in 2015 to oversee election processes, reported 30 potential cases of fraud from July 1, 2023 through September 12, 2024. However, none of the cases were related to citizenship, and most were related to people voting twice or involved people with felonies. 

In October of 2023, a woman in Wisconsin was charged with election fraud for voting in an April school board election, despite not being a citizen. But she admitted to the act, saying that it was a misunderstanding and that her daughter-in-law completed the paperwork due to an English language barrier, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She has since entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and the charges will be dismissed. 

Anti-immigrant concerns

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, a Wisconsin organization that works with the civil rights of immigrants, says the drive behind the ballot initiative is anti-immigration sentiment and disinformation.

“My greatest concern is that this is being used to create a narrative that is intended to motivate part of Trump’s MAGA base to turn out on election day and based on how people look, and if they’re not English dominant, they will try to intimidate and harass U.S. citizen voters to try to steal the elections,” she says. 

Neumann-Ortiz is also concerned that the ballot initiative is part of a longer-term strategy of voter suppression.

“It’s been a very calculated agenda by the right wing,” she says. “There’s been a relentless attack on eroding voting rights.”

She pointed to a lawsuit, Cerny v Wisconsin Elections Commission, filed by a citizen in Wisconsin in August. In the case, Ardis Cerny, a resident of Pewaukee, sued the commission and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to challenge how the state verifies the citizenship status of voters with drivers licenses. Cerny alleges that the commission does not check the registration of applicants with the Department of Motor Vehicles list of driver’s licenses and identification cards to ensure they have citizenship. The lawsuit is still ongoing. 

Neumann-Ortiz believes that the amendment would “disenfranchise so many people,” because when residents become naturalized U.S. citizens, they don’t have to go to the DMV to update immigration status, meaning the documentation isn’t always aligned. When they register to vote, however, they have to show evidence of citizenship, she says. 

Immigrants who are working to gain citizenship are not interested in registering to vote illegally and jeopardizing their future, Neumann-Ortiz added. 

“It’s more anti-immigration rhetoric, it’s more disinformation, and it’s voter suppression for all voters,” she says. “It’s an attack on democracy.”

The Wisconsin constitution has been amended 148 times, with the most recent change in April of 2023. In regards to voting, previous amendments have been made to expand rights based on race, gender, and age. It will also not be the only state where noncitizen voting is on the ballot in November: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Carolina also have ballot measures regarding noncitizen voting this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislature, a coalition of members of state legislatures around the U.S.

“This question on the ballot sounds pretty good, but what you have to do as a conscientious voter is look behind the question. Why is it being asked? What could be the unintended consequences?” Cronmiller says. “Our elections are fair, they’re safe, they’re accountable, only the people who should be getting ballots are getting ballots. There’s no problem to fix here and I think we’re actually potentially creating a future problem by enacting this particular constitutional change.”