A study from Virgil Wiebe, professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, was recently cited in a story from The Washington Post about how new noncitizen voting laws could affect eligible voters.
From the story:
While noncitizens are barred from voting in all state and federal elections, they are allowed to vote in school or municipal elections in Washington, D.C., and 18 communities. Elsewhere, Republican election officials were aggressive in removing voters from the rolls who they thought might be noncitizens. The moves sparked a wave of litigation, including in Alabama, where a federal judge ended the state’s efforts to take voters off the rolls.
Noncitizen voting rarely happens in state and federal elections. A federal judge in 2018 found that at most 39 noncitizens were placed on the voter rolls in Kansas over 19 years. Georgia’s secretary of state last year found 20 noncitizens on its rolls of 8.2 million voters. A University of St. Thomas study last year found three noncitizens were convicted of voting illegally in Minnesota over nine years, when more than 13.4 million ballots were cast.
“We all want it to be zero, but come on,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D). “That is a microscopic level of misconduct.”
