The issue of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections has been a hot discussion throughout the 2024 election season, reaching a climax Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia will be allowed to remove suspected noncitizens from its voter registration rolls, an effort Wyoming supported.
Both Gov. Mark Gordon and Secretary of State Chuck Gray have stressed that noncitizens should not be allowed to vote in American or Wyoming elections.
“The Supreme Court correctly upheld Virginia’s efforts to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls,” Gray told Cowboy State Daily. “States have the authority and the obligation to ensure that only citizens are voting in our elections.”
In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday, Wyoming joined 25 other states in urging the Supreme Court to allow Virginia’s removal of “self-identified noncitizens” from voter rolls.
In the brief, Wyoming and the other states argue that they are “interested in preserving their constitutional authority to determine voter qualifications in elections and in maintaining election integrity by allowing only eligible citizens to vote.”
“The Constitution leaves decisions about voter qualifications to the people of Virginia,” the brief reads. “And the people of Virginia have decided that noncitizens are not permitted to vote.”
All of the states signing onto the brief except one, New Hampshire, have a Republican majority population.
Gray said having Wyoming join the amicus brief was too little and too late from Gordon. He and Gordon sparred earlier this year when the governor vetoed rules Gray proposed to tighten voter registration requirements at the polls.
“It's disappointing that Governor Gordon continues to do the bare minimum on addressing this issue to get his allies in the media to try to trick people into believing he is doing something on this issue when he has really done nothing,” Gray said. “The front-end protections that Governor Gordon vetoed have exposed Wyoming and need to be put in place.”
Hot Button Issue
Former President Donald Trump has framed Virginia’s campaign as ensuring noncitizens don’t vote, but President Joe Biden’s administration and voting rights groups have argued it will potentially disenfranchise legal citizens from voting.
A spokesperson for the governor said he has heard concerns from Wyoming residents about the impacts the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies could have on noncitizens attempting to vote.
Last Friday, a unanimous panel of judges from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Virginia's request.
As a result of Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, about 1,600 people will be purged from Virginia’s voter rolls. Although these people have self-identified as noncitizens, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia argued they hadn’t been fully vetted for citizenship status.
Noncitizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections but are allowed to vote in local elections in certain parts of the country that do not include Wyoming.
Early on in his administration, Biden issued an executive order to try and get more eligible voters signed up to cast ballots. The order called for federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation in ways that are “consistent with applicable law.”
GOP lawmakers, state election officials like Gray and other Republican activists launched claims this summer that the Biden administration was using the order to overstep the federal government’s role in elections to garner more Democratic voters and register non-U.S. citizens, who cannot legally vote in federal elections.
The Virginia case began with an order signed by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in August that required election officials to take more aggressive steps to match residents who self-identified as noncitizens at the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls and to purge those matches.
He called Wednesday’s decision a “victory for common sense and election fairness.”
“Clean voter rolls are one important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Virginians also know that we have paper ballots, counting machines not connected to the internet, a strong chain of custody process, signature verification, monitored and secured drop boxes, and a 'triple check' vote counting process to tabulate results.”
Wyoming Angle
In September, Gordon signed an executive order directing Wyoming state agencies to prevent and report noncitizen voting.
“It seemed appropriate for the state of Wyoming not to participate in any effort to make sure ineligible voters have the ability to register,” Gordon said during a press conference earlier this month.
During the press conference, Gordon was asked if he had concerns that by singling out noncitizen voters it could lead to legal Hispanic voters intimidated or unwelcomed to vote. Gordon dismissed this concern.
“I don’t think we want to try and intimidate anybody,” Gordon said. “Which is why I encourage anybody who is legally here as a citizen to be able to participate in the voting.”
Documented cases of noncitizens voting in the U.S. are rare but have been found. According to CNN, a recent Georgia audit of the 8.2 million people on its registration rolls found 20 registered noncitizens, nine of whom had voted.
Gray has brought up multiple times the instance of an alleged illegal immigrant who was removed from the voter rolls in Campbell County as an example of how the problem is relevant to Wyoming.
This person, Christian Lopez, 42, voted in the 2020 general election in Wyoming and was still on the state’s voter rolls registered as a Republican as of August 2023.
According to court documents, Lopez pleaded guilty to making a false statement to acquire a passport in 2022 and was sentenced to 60 days in jail in 2023. He had used a fraudulent birth certificate to get a Wyoming’s driver’s license as well as register to vote in Wyoming, and had attempted to use the fake birth certificate to get a passport.
Gray’s voter rules that Gordon vetoed would have required people registering to vote in Wyoming to prove residency if their form of identification didn’t already show it, but Gordon said this move exceeded the secretary of state’s statutory authority.
“Despite Governor Gordon’s unfortunate veto, our office is going to be doing all it can with our existing resources to ensure investigation and prosecution for non-citizens who attempt to vote in Wyoming elections,” Gray said.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
