Trump Pushes for State-by-State Citizenship Registries Despite Lack of Evidence of Widespread Noncitizen Voting

President Trump is moving to establish state-level citizenship registries, asserting they are needed to prevent noncitizens from casting ballots. The claim addresses a problem that virtually does not exist, yet the president has repeatedly described it as widespread despite his own administration failing to produce supporting evidence.

“I think this will help a lot with elections,” Mr. Trump said in March before signing an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to compile a citizenship roster for each state that could be used to verify voter eligibility.

Mr. Trump has pursued similar efforts since his first term. In 2019, he directed the government to gather citizenship data after a failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

More recently, the president has backed a strict voter identification bill, now stalled in the Senate, which would require states to rely on federal databases to identify noncitizens.

Democratic-led states and voting rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block the executive order on multiple grounds, including the argument that the Constitution does not grant the executive branch explicit authority over elections.

During a recent hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged that the proposed lists would likely be unreliable for determining who is eligible to vote.

Here are some of the practical, legal, and historical implications of the proposal.

A citizenship list is bound to be incomplete.

Unlike countries with national identification cards, the United States has no single document that certifies citizenship.

Only about 54 percent of Americans hold passports. Social Security cards, which are generally issued at birth, can also be held by noncitizens. Naturalized citizens do not possess U.S. birth certificates, which document citizenship by birthright. And no central index exists for naturalization records, according to the National Archives.

Under the order, the lists would draw on citizenship and naturalization records, Social Security data, and other federal databases.

The directive instructs the Department of Homeland Security to send each state the lists it compiles from that information. It then invites states to provide the U.S. Postal Service with their own lists of voters eligible for mail-in ballots at least 60 days before a federal election. It further instructs the Postal Service to send states another set of lists identifying individuals “enrolled with the U.S.P.S.” for mail voting.

At the court hearing, attorneys challenging the order argued that any government-produced lists would be outdated almost immediately.

An administration lawyer conceded that “no list is ever going to be perfect.”

Building citizenship lists from federal data could run afoul of privacy laws.

The Privacy Act of 1974 states that “no agency shall disclose any record” to another agency without written consent from the individual whose information would be shared.

Certain exceptions apply. One allows information to be shared in connection with “civil or criminal law enforcement activity,” provided the enforcement effort is lawful.

The government must also follow strict regulations if it wishes to run a “matching program” that uses computer software to cross-reference different record systems.

Lawyers opposing the order argued that it would be impossible to produce a list that does not violate the Privacy Act in some respect. Judge Carl J. Nichols noted that it was too early to determine whether the government would breach privacy statutes.

Justice Department lawyers said the government had not yet decided how to implement the executive order and did not explain how the citizenship lists would comply with the Privacy Act.

The federal government has never maintained a central citizenship registry.

The United States has employed various means to verify citizenship since the 18th century, but the country has never operated a centralized citizenship database.

At the hearing, Trump administration attorneys said the proposed lists could serve a range of lawful purposes, including verifying eligible voters and supporting law enforcement operations.

David J. Bier, the immigration studies director at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, said that both citizens and noncitizens could see their rights compromised if a flawed database were used for either purpose.

“Absolutely it’s an abuse when it comes to our rights,” Mr. Bier said. “If it’s contingent on the accuracy of a database, then automatically you end up with problems.”

Mr. Trump’s push for a citizenship list follows other efforts to redefine the scope of U.S. citizenship. On his first day back in office, he sought to overturn the long-standing principle of birthright citizenship, an order now before the Supreme Court. His administration is also moving to strip U.S. citizenship from hundreds of naturalized Americans.

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