How voter purge disputes have fueled the GOP ‘narrative’ of noncitizen voting

The letter that Jona Hilario, a mother of two in Columbus, received this summer from the Ohio secretary of state’s office came as a surprise. It warned she could face a potential felony charge if she voted because, although she’s a registered voter, documents at the state’s motor vehicle department indicated she was not a US citizen.

The letter that Jona Hilario, a mother of two in Columbus, received this summer from the Ohio secretary of state’s office came as a surprise. It warned she could face a potential felony charge if she voted because, although she’s a registered voter, documents at the state’s motor vehicle department indicated she was not a US citizen. But Hilario – who immigrated to the US from the Philippines two decades ago and now works to empower Asian and Pacific Islanders in her community – was naturalized in 2022; she just had not renewed her driver’s license since 2021. So, she had to submit proof of her citizenship to remain on the voter rolls ahead of the November election. “You feel like a second-class citizen,” Hilario told CNN in an interview. “It makes me really just upset and angry. I became a citizen because I wanted to be able to have a voice in this process.” The episode underscores the perils of a wide-ranging campaign by Republican officials and conservative groups to highlight voting by noncitizens – a problem that voting experts say is virtually nonexistent. The debate is raging from Ohio to Texas, and the US Supreme Court could rule as soon as Tuesday on a legal battle in Virginia over an eleventh-hour effort by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to remove nearly 1,600 suspected noncitizens from the rolls ahead of next week’s election. This issue is certain to transcend this year’s presidential contest. Next week, voters in eight states – including the presidential battlegrounds of Wisconsin and North Carolina – will decide whether to add language reaffirming citizen-only voting to their state constitutions. Twelve states have citizen-only voting laws on their books, according to Americans for Citizen Voting, which is pushing the constitutional amendments. Republican officials around the country claim they have uncovered thousands of noncitizens on their rolls and are filing new lawsuits alleging the Biden administration is withholding key information that allows them to verify that only US citizens are casting ballots.