Connecticut’s top election official pushed back Wednesday on a White House executive order seeking to require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas called the order “another unlawful and unconstitutional overreach into our electoral processes.”
“It sounds easy: just produce your birth certificate or your passport in order to vote,” Thomas said. “But it doesn't take much imagination to see how this could easily make it harder for eligible voters to cast their ballot.”
Thomas gave examples of elderly residents in assisted living without access to a passport or birth certificate and people whose documents don’t reflect name changes after marriage as examples of individuals potentially burdened by a new proof-of-citizenship requirement.
Thomas said many of the “election integrity” aspects of the order are redundant in Connecticut.
“We already have strong and secure elections, and don't need the federal government mandating things that we already do,” Thomas said, listing the use of paper ballots, banning foreign spending in elections, maintaining voter rolls, compliance with the Voting Rights Act, and only counting ballots received by Election Day as requirements of the order already in practice in the state.
Thomas said she hoped the order would be challenged in court.
In a statement Wednesday, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said he was “evaluating all legal options to protect our constitutional authority to conduct our elections in a manner that respects voters’ rights and our need for safe and secure elections.”
“This is a lawless attempt to suppress and manipulate free and fair elections across the United States, from an unhinged aspiring dictator still seeking to rewrite history to erase his defeat more than four years ago,” Tong said.
President Donald Trump has long declined to fully accept and acknowledge his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. NPR reported on Trump’s “baseless claims” around noncitizen voting ahead of the 2024 election.
