Voters cast their ballots on the first day of early voting at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library in Little Rock, Arkansas on Monday. In Arkansas and five other states, voters are considering ballot measures that would make it clear that only U.S. citizens may vote. (Photo by Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate)
Voters in six states are considering ballot measures in the midterm elections that would make it clear that only U.S. citizens may vote — and block local governments from expanding that right to others.
Proposed constitutional amendments in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, South Dakota and West Virginia would explicitly bar noncitizens from voting. Federal law already does this for federal elections, and no state allows noncitizens to vote in statewide elections.
So why the need for constitutional amendments?
Sponsors of the amendments — primarily Republicans — say they want to preemptively bar cities or other local governments from allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, as municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont have done.
“I know it looks like we’re just doing right-wing nutty stuff for the sake of doing it, but no,” said Jack Tomczak, vice president of outreach for Americans for Citizen Voting. The group has worked to pass citizen-only amendments around the country.
“If you want to vote, we believe — philosophically, ideologically — that you should be a citizen before you get a say in how a city, state or country runs things.”
Arkansas state Rep. David Ray, a Republican, called Arkansas’ ballot measure “preventative” in a news conference last month.
“We know that bad ideas, whether they’re in California or Illinois or Maryland or some other state, there’s nothing that magically stops those bad ideas at that state’s borders,” he said.
Some election watchdogs say the ballot measures are a political stunt, an effort to turn out conservative voters in midterm elections that look daunting for Republicans. In swing states such as Arizona, and in states including Alaska where Republican candidates are facing surprisingly tough elections, it could motivate conservative voters to show up at the polls rather than tune out the election.
“I think it’s in large part tied to the current political environment and the Trump focus on noncitizen voting,” said Joshua Douglas, associate dean for research and a professor at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law.
“There’s also a political aspect to it that some legislators think this is a good way to energize their base to come out to vote, which can have an effect in other elections.”
This year’s ballot measures are the latest in a flurry of similar initiatives in recent years: Between 2018 and last year, states put 15 citizenship requirement measures on their ballots. Eight of those were in 2024.
Voters approved all 15 measures by healthy margins, with an average of 73% voting in favor, according to Ballotpedia, which tracks election results. Though Republican legislators have been responsible for getting most of those on the ballot, Democratic legislators in some states, such as Iowa, also have voted for them.
But some experts caution that constitutional amendments that limit voting to U.S. citizens curb local autonomy.
“A one-word change can actually make a big difference,” Douglas said. “This is really about, ‘Do we want to give localities the power to decide who their electorate is?’”
In recent years, 21 local governments in California, Maryland and Vermont, as well as Washington, D.C., have allowed noncitizens to vote in certain local elections, such as for school boards. Some of these jurisdictions, such as Takoma Park, Maryland, also allow people as young as 16 to vote in local elections.
They can do this because the language in many state constitutions says “every citizen” or “all citizens” have the right to vote. That language usually is interpreted to mean that states must allow all citizens to vote, not that the franchise has to be limited to citizens, Douglas said.
“The concept is (that) the locality can define who their community is, who their electorate is, and that they shouldn’t be excluding people who are within that community as they’ve chosen to define it,” said Douglas, who specializes in election law and voting rights.
“There’s also an aspect of local control. I think that’s what these communities that have chosen to do it have had in the background.”
The only citizenship voting measure put on this year’s ballot by citizen initiative, rather than the state legislature, is in Alaska.
The effort was spearheaded by Alaskans for Citizen Voting, a campaign backed by former Republican state lawmakers.
“The law should be clear and easy to understand,” said Grant Robinson, spokesperson for Alaskans for Citizen Voting. Robinson said he’s unaware of any cities in Alaska that have tried to allow noncitizen voting, but calls it an opportunity for Alaskans to be proactive.
“We want to make sure the people of Alaska have the opportunity now to affirm their position that voting is reserved as a privilege of being a U.S. citizen,” he said.
For significant portions of the nation’s history, noncitizens have had the right to vote.
“The citizen voting rights issue is an interesting one because we often think of voting rights as expanding through American history, but resident voting rights for people who aren’t citizens have actually contracted,” said Sam Novey, chief strategist at the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement.
Throughout the 1800s, many states and territories allowed foreign-born noncitizens to vote. But beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, state ballot measures passed that repealed or restricted noncitizen voting.
Efforts to extend noncitizen voting rights in certain local elections, Novey said, is the latest iteration of a “long legacy of suffrage movements in the United States building power and momentum by winning that right in sub-national and sub-state elections.”
In Wyoming, for example, women successfully pushed for the right to vote in 1869, five decades before they won national suffrage in 1920.
Many of the cities that allow noncitizen voting have done so for school board elections.
“Even if you believe voting should be restricted to U.S. citizens, as many Americans do, that brings up an interesting question in the case of U.S. citizen children of noncitizen residents,” Novey said.
Allowing noncitizens to vote for school boards ensures all citizen children have a voice — through their parents and guardians — in the election of school officials who have significant control over their lives, he said.
The Trump administration has been focused for more than a year on pressuring states to root out election fraud, which he has said, without evidence, is rampant.
The citizen voter ballot measures feel like “part of this broader trend of exploring and implementing additional restrictions on voter participation or involvement in the voting process,” said Wren Orey, managing director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project.
States that have audited their voter rolls have found that noncitizen voting is extremely rare.
A 2024 Georgia state audit discovered 20 noncitizens registered to vote, representing 0.000002% of the 8.2 million registered voters in that state. In Iowa in 2025, a state investigation confirmed 277 noncitizens had registered to vote, about 0.00013% of 2.1 million registered voters. And a yearlong review of Utah’s voter rolls completed earlier this year found just 27 confirmed noncitizens out of more than 2 million registered voters, or 0.000014%.
Elsewhere, states in recent years have enacted proof-of-citizenship laws that will make it more difficult for some voters to cast their ballots.
Many of the laws — including those in Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota and Utah — require documentary proof of citizenship before a person can register to vote in state and local elections.
Around 12% of registered voters lack the kinds of documents that proof-of-citizenship laws typically require, Orey said.
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Louisiana Illuminator, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
