From the first list of conditions:
Proof of U.S. citizenship, legal
permanent resident status, legal
conditional resident status or
legal presence in the U.S.
You do not need to be a US citizen to obtain a driver’s license in Wisconsin according to your cite.
You are correct! Thanks for noting this.
I will ask my “boss” (on zero to four days each year), the city clerk, about this – and get back to y’all. It’s something I should know (or maybe I did and have forgotten – we had no election in 2023).
I am certain you must be a US citizen to vote in Wisconsin – it’s in the constitution:
“Article III of the Wisconsin Constitution creates a right for residents to vote provided that the person: (a) is a U.S. citizen…”
But as to how we ensure that the registrant so qualifies, I will let you know soon.
Okay, got it. It really just comes down to the applicant’s signature on the registration form (see page 2 of my previous cite, for a full list of what they fill out on the form). The applicant is swearing, on pain of felony charges, that they are a US citizen.
So, yes, there is a bit of trust involved. But think about it: Why would a non-citizen (or anyone) take such a huge risk, simply to add one more vote to the millions in their state? Answer: Almost no one does:
“Pennsylvania officials estimated that the noncitizens they identified cast 544 votes from 2000 through 2017, out of 93 million overall votes cast.”
And this is really the crux of it. The “illegal voters are swarming the system” true believers honestly believe that Democrats are intentionally allowing/encouraging migrants to enter, register, and vote in order to win elections. In spite of there being significant risk to the individual migrant both in arriving and in voting illegally. And in spite of there being no evidence of it happening at any sort of scale at all.
Those of us that remember the olden days recall Trump sending out Kris Kobach to prove that so many illegal voters cast ballots in 2016 that he (Trump) actually won the popular vote. No such evidence was found: Report: Trump commission did not find widespread voter fraud | AP News
It’s nonsense, but part of the ingrained world-view of the MAGA movement at this point. “We only lose if they cheat”. It provides all the justification they need for events like Jan 6, 2021.
Well said - thanks.
Are you sure? I thought you merely needed to state under penalty of perjury that you were a citizen on your voter registration form. No proof needed.
As I stated just a couple posts ago, Saint_Cad is correct about how citizenship is dealt with during registration at a polling place. However, Gyrate is not wrong. Poll workers are trained to call their city/county clerk (on a dedicated phone) if they have ANY questions or doubts about ANYTHING. This would include if they somehow suspect the would-be registrant is lying about their citizenship status.
The clerk will probably authorize a PROVISIONAL BALLOT, allowing the registrant to vote then and there, BUT their vote won’t be counted until up to several days later. Any possible irregularities in their registration form will be investigated by proper authorities in the interim.
In other words, the poll worker is far from “helpless.”
FTR: I was referring to how it is dealt with when you register to vote pre-election. I have no clue if the standard is different if you register at the poll. As an example, you can get a driver’s license in Colorado even if you are a non-citizen and then use that as proof of identification when registering online. Are there any checks like it being flagged if not a REAL-ID? I have no clue.
I have “worked the polls” too. We ask for drivers license (which 99% use as their ID). Look at the picture on it to see if looks like the person who has come to vote, then look at the registration list to see if that person at that address is registeted to vote. If he is, he gets a ballot and gets to vote. We aren’t allowed to ask someone to prove he is a citizen. Most legal resident aliens have a license, as do many illegal aliems, and nowhere does the license say they aren’t a citizen. (The system will tell us if the same person has voted elsewhere in the county, and now he’s attempting to vote a second time – we can turn someone away for that.)
Yes, Wisconsin has required all driver’s licenses and state IDs to be “REAL ID” since about five years ago.
May we ask your state?
Living in a small town, the poll worker has already found my name in her book by the time I reach her (it’s always an older woman) table.
But the check of citizenship would have been made earlier, at the registration and compiling of the list.
As described, there is no check other than you are a registered voter.
You haven’t explained why any non-citizen would want to vote. Committing such a crime carries huge risk for no gain, since a single vote makes no difference to the outcome.
Of course, you could argue that if a massive number of non-citizens all voted, they could swing an election and gain something. But a prisoner’s dilemma dynamic applies. If you knew a massive number of non-citizens were going to vote, it would be better to “defect” and not vote yourself, taking no personal risk but still obtaining the benefit. So that risk-benefit dynamic means that in fact nobody votes, and nobody gets the hypothetical benefit that might accrue if they all did.
Of course not. The whole reason that clause was written in the first place was to disqualify former Confederate rebels. There were a million of them. They certainly didn’t try and convict a million Confederates in the 1860s before implementing this policy. They just didn’t let them run for office. The clear precedent is that this applies to all rebels, not just convicted criminals.
I agree SCOTUS needs to rule, though. If Trump is ineligible, he’s ineligible in all 50 States. If he is eligible, he’s eligible in all 50 States. I think he’s ineligible, but this piecemeal approach is the worst of both worlds.
The question is not whether or not he is eligible to be on the ballot in any one, or all 50, states (or, at least it shouldn’t be). The question that should be going to the SC is, does the SoS of Colorado have the authority to keep Trump (or any other candidate) off of a Primary Ballot. I am pretty sure existing precedent is behind Colorado on this one.
The states do seem to have the ability to place restrictions on primary ballot candidates. I suspect they have to be transparent and consistent with those restrictions. They can’t bar a candidate for being black, for example. Nor for being a Republican. But, my understanding is that Colorado law does allow their SoS to prevent candidates who are ineligible to hold office from being on the primary ballot.
What the SC needs to rule on is whether or not Trump is disqualified from being President. I doubt they will make that decision. At least, I doubt they’ll decide that unless he is elected by the electoral college and the disability of Amendment 14 Section 3 has not been removed by Congress, as described by the same. They may, perhaps, hint at Trump being disqualified by reason of the 14th Amendment, but I suspect they will avoid making a yes or no decision unless they have to.
As I have stated before on this issue, I suspect they will grant in part and deny in part Trump’s appeal. They will grant that write-in votes for Trump are to be tallied in the primary election, which the Colorado SC decision forbade. They will deny that the Constitution compels the State of Colorado to have Trump printed as a ballot option. It will be a narrowly crafted opinion so that it only applies to Colorado (and other states whose election laws are written like Colorado’s).
Why did someone vote under my name a couple decades ago? I have no clue but it did happen. I’m not claiming all 11-12 million illegal residents are doing it, but the number is not 0.
I’m really thinking based on Section 5
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
means they can’t. State rights end when the Feds have an enumerated power like that. And SCOTUS will punt saying they do not have the power to enforce a non-existent law. It is up to Congress.
And all the evidence that we have is that it’s a very small number, consistent with the fact that there is no good reason to do it and somebody would be taking a stupid risk to do so.
Any benefit from doing it would have to be something other than the electoral outcome, it would have to be a massive campaign of literally bribing people to vote ilegally. I’m sure that the right wing disinformation campaign has no trouble claiming that this is happening, but the true likelihood of such a conspiracy happening and remaining hidden without evidence is zero.
But if that number is, say, 4, in an election with many thousands of votes, it’s not going to affect the outcome.
There will never be a system that can prevent 100% of fraud. But if you have a system that prevents 99% or some other overwhelming percentage, then you can feel very secure in the results of the election. We have such a system.
Here is testimony from someone who Trump himself hired to find evidence of fraud in 2020, and a bit of what he discovered.
My company’s contract with the campaign obligated us to deliver evidence of voter fraud that could be defended in a court of law. The small amount of voter fraud I found was bipartisan, with about as many Republicans casting duplicate votes as Democrats.
This is a crime of privilege: Those with two homes sometimes take two bites of the electoral apple.
There were also small numbers of deceased voters. Still, nothing emerged that could provide a solid basis for a legal challenge to an election result in any of the states we evaluated.
Interesting that there was no mention of votes from non-citizens ineligible to vote. Because as others here have said, the last thing you want to do if you are undocumented or your presence in the country is otherwise vulnerable, is to put yourself at risk.
It’s a great excuse to make it harder for certain segments of the population to vote, when those people tend to vote in greater numbers for your opponents, and Republicans have used that excuse in a number of places.