Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and the directors of the Indiana Election Division are being taken to federal court over two new state laws that impact naturalized citizens who vote.
Both laws, which became effective July 1 of this year, require some form of cross-check between voter information and citizenship status in a manner that some voting rights organizations, in a lawsuit filed Oct. 21, allege violates both the National Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act by creating unnecessary barriers for a certain class of U.S. citizen.
“Many individuals (we have) assisted to obtain citizenship over the years fled from countries where they never had the chance to participate in a democracy,” Cole Varga, CEO of Exodus Refugee Immigration, one of the plaintiffs, wrote in a statement. “We cannot allow their voices to be silenced again in Indiana.”
The state laws were part of an “election integrity” effort sweeping Republican states to purge the voter rolls of potential noncitizen voters. Supporters argue the goal is not to restrict access to the polls but to make sure only legal citizens are voting. However, state-level audits and studies have found there’s no evidence this is a widespread issue.
Morales’ own review of BMV records, pursuant to the new citizenship check provision in the 2024 law, unearthed just one allegation of a noncitizen voting that he referred to Vigo County law enforcement.
Voter list maintenance legislation picked up steam during the 2020 election, during which dozens of claims of fraudulent voting were investigated and dismissed. More than a dozen states have enacted such laws since then.
One Indiana law from 2024, House Enrolled Act 1624, requires election administrators to cross check the state voter rolls with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles’ list of people who have been issued a temporary driver’s license or ID, which are given to legal noncitizens. People flagged from this list then have to provide proof of their citizenship to their county within 30 days or else be kicked off the voter rolls. Those kicked off can appeal, but there is no deadline to resolve appeals.
The other one, House Enrolled Act 1680 passed this year, is similar: It catches people who register to vote using a temporary ID number and requires them to provide proof of citizenship. Unlike the first law, this law doesn’t have an appeal process for rejected voters.
The plaintiffs ― League of Women Voters of Indiana, Common Cause Indiana, Hoosier Asian American Power and Exodus Refugee Immigration ― are not only seeking a block to these laws, but a court order to compel the release of public records they requested on the number and identity of Hoosier voters these laws have flagged.
Indiana is not the first state to be sued over such laws. When Texas experimented with a similar citizenship data review process in 2019, three federal lawsuits were filed, and three months in, the Texas secretary of state agreed to end the experiment as part of a settlement. Similarly in Georgia in 2018, a federal judge ordered the state to change its procedure flagging potential non-citizens.
The secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Why voter rights groups are suing Morales
A problem with the method of citizenship verification, the plaintiffs argue, is these temporary credentials are a form of potentially outdated information. Noncitizens who obtain such credentials are not required to update the BMV and get new credentials when they do become citizens. They are allowed to use those temporary credentials until they expire ― up to six years ― even if that’s after they become citizens.
This time lapse will lead to lawful citizens being identified as noncitizens, the plaintiffs argue. That’s what happened in the Texas and Georgia cases.
Further, for those who do not have naturalization documents or passports handy, it is a lengthy and expensive process to procure new copies ― often longer than 30 days, the lawsuit notes. It costs hundreds of dollars and an average of seven months’ time to replace a certificate of naturalization, they note. The cost and time could end up disenfranchising certain voters, the plaintiffs argue.
The lawsuit claims at least three U.S. citizens living in Marion and Monroe counties have been incorrectly flagged by the provisions of HEA 1264, and “several” in Marion County have been flagged through HEA 1680.
They are claiming violations of the National Voting Rights Act in a few ways. First, the state provisions impose more stringent requirements than what the NVRA allows for federal elections, thereby creating two different processes that are not equivalent. Second, they say extra verification steps are not necessary to verify citizenship, which the forms already do via attestation under the penalty of perjury. And third, they allege the processes required of immigrants that people born in the U.S. do not have to go through amount to discriminatory treatment under the law.
That last point also constitutes a violation of the Civil Rights Act, they argue.
“There is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting or attempts to register to vote in our elections,” said Ami Gandhi, director of the Midwest Voting Rights Program with the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which is helping represent the plaintiffs. “This will result in the wrongful disenfranchisement of eligible voters, many of whom are people of color.”
Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on X @kayla_dwyer17.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Secretary of State Diego Morales sued over new voting laws affecting naturalized citizens
Reporting by Kayla Dwyer, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
