Skip to content

Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020

Is proof of citizenship required when registering to vote in federal elections?

Emma Corby, Gigafact
no

A 1993 law easing voter registration for federal elections stipulates that voters must be U.S. citizens, but doesn't actually require voters to show proof of their eligibility.

The National Voter Registration Act requires that registrants swear under penalty of perjury that they are citizens. The lack of required proof conflicts with language in the constitutions of a handful of states, including Arizona. To comply with the law, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2013, Arizona maintains a separate roll of "federal only" voters. In 2018, there were 11,904 voters in that category, and 14% voted, according to the Arizona Mirror.

A federal court deemed similar citizenship requirements in Kansas, Alabama and Georgia unconstitutional in 2016.

See a full discussion of this at Gigafact

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.