By Alexander Shur for Votebeat Wisconsin.
Broadcast version by Judith Ruiz-Branch for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Rural News Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Melissa Kono had just finished a training session with a new Republican poll worker in 2014 when she asked the poll worker if she had any questions.

“Her question was, ‘What do I do when all the Mexicans come in to vote?’” recalled Kono, the town clerk in Burnside, in western Wisconsin’s Trempealeau County. “And I was speechless, because I was like, that just doesn’t happen. There’s all this other stuff you should be asking questions about because it’s new to you … I was just flabbergasted by that comment.”

Since then, as she trains poll workers and clerks across the state, Kono said she has seen the worry over noncitizen voting grow. At this point, she said, the baseless concern that noncitizens will vote en masse in the Nov. 5 presidential contest is the election conspiracy theory she hears about most from GOP poll workers and voters. The suspicion plays into growing doubts about the integrity of elections and century-old stereotypes of immigrants as criminals.

In hindsight, Kono said, “I should have seen this coming, because it’s only bubbled up even more.”

For years, Wisconsin conservatives have been hammering the talking point that noncitizens may be able to cast ballots en masse in the state and across the nation. That’s despite federal law banning noncitizens from voting in presidential elections and the fact that there’s no evidence of noncitizens voting in federal contests in any meaningful numbers.

The messaging has percolated from conservative think tanks to politicians and voters across the state. In Wisconsin, Republicans passed legislation linked to the issue, including a proposed constitutional amendment coming before voters in November. A top Republican lawmaker has also sought to find data on how many noncitizens have state-issued IDs that they could potentially use to vote.

Now, weeks away from Nov. 5, clerks are hearing the same concern from some of their voters and poll workers. And suddenly, the talking point of noncitizens voting in the 2024 election appears to be about as prominent as the repeatedly discredited 2020 election conspiracy theory that corrupt voting officials and hacked voting machines enabled Democrats to steal the election.

Lawmakers have raised concern over the fact that the Wisconsin Elections Commission and local clerks don’t have a specific system to keep noncitizens from voting. Election officials don’t have a database they’re required to use that shows a list of noncitizens with state-accepted IDs, for example, though one clerk in southeast Wisconsin says she has found a state system that has helped her catch noncitizens who registered to vote.

Noncitizens and immigrant advocates say no such system is needed. It’s already a felony under federal law for noncitizens to try to vote, and the risks of doing so — including jail time and deportation — are enough to dissuade them from casting a ballot.

Talking point emerges ahead of 2024 election

The conservative messaging about noncitizen voting, which emerged more than a century ago, serves a few purposes for contestants in the current election cycle, said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. First, it focuses attention on immigration, which is a signature issue for Republicans and their presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Second, it acts as a cover to explain why Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020.

And third, “It sets the stage for this fall’s elections,” Burden said. “That if things don’t go as the Republicans would like, there has been a premise laid out already that noncitizens are part of the problem and are committing fraud and might be responsible for an election that’s not trustworthy.”

Indeed, the Trump campaign appears to be laying the rhetorical groundwork already for legal challenges based on the premise that noncitizen voting will swing results.

“Democrats are pushing for non-citizens to vote and influence the future of our country,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, referencing proposals in some cities allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections and adding that Democrats “aren’t even trying to hide their election interference schemes.”

That line of thinking has already inspired legislation and lawsuits in Wisconsin.

Over the past couple of years, as some cities around the country allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, Wisconsin Republicans pushed for a proposed constitutional amendment that would state “only” U.S. citizens can vote in local, state and federal elections. That’s the proposal on the November ballot.

Republicans in 2023 also passed legislation requiring that state IDs issued to noncitizens be marked as not valid for voting purposes. Lawmakers considered the bill after the clerk in Mequon, in southeastern Ozaukee County, said she had four experiences in 18 months with noncitizens either voting or trying to vote. But Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed the legislation, saying the bill could cause noncitizens to be treated unfairly and perpetuate false claims about elections.

This August, a Wisconsin voter filed a lawsuit alleging the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Department of Transportation weren’t sharing data that would help election officials block noncitizens from voting.

Rep. Scott Krug, a Republican who chairs the Assembly Elections Committee, said it would be his “mission” to build a better system to prevent noncitizens from voting.

In the meantime, despite a lack of evidence, right-wing claims about noncitizens voting en masse increased.

“There is a non-negligible amount of voter participation by non-citizens in federal elections, which is not only a serious threat to the integrity of our elections and the democratic process they represent, but also has the potential to reduce Americans’ trust and confidence in election results,” stated an Oct. 7 letter that congressional Republicans, including Wisconsin’s U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In June, Trump posted on social media, “Non citizen Illegal Migrants are getting the right to vote, being pushed by crooked Democrat Politicians who are not being stopped by an equally dishonest Justice Department.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico recently, “If you have enough non-citizens participating in some of these swing areas, you can change the outcome of the election in the majority.”

No required verification system, but one clerk said she checks every voter

Kono, the former Burnside clerk, said some of the election workers she has trained recently have asked her how to verify voters’ citizenship. She tells them that when voters register, they must certify under the penalty of perjury that they’re U.S. citizens.

“Some of them are not satisfied with that,” Kono said, “because it’s like, ‘Well, how do you verify it?’”

As it stands, Wisconsin has no required process to verify whether every person who seeks to vote is a citizen. And the Department of Transportation doesn’t currently have a system providing voters’ current citizenship status to election clerks.

Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs said that for several years she’s been using a different system to verify citizenship, and has used it to discover noncitizens who registered to vote or cast ballots — leading in a few instances to prosecution.

When people register in Mequon to vote, Fochs said, she checks their information against a Wisconsin Department of Transportation system providing access to driver records. The Public Abstract Request System doesn’t connect to the voter rolls, but Fochs said it does indicate whether people with licenses were U.S. citizens when they applied.

She had used that system for about 15 years to check the information voters provided when they registered. In 2021, after somebody didn’t mark that they’re a citizen on a voter form, she also began using the system to check for citizenship status.

When somebody is marked as something besides a U.S. citizen, Fochs said, she sends their information to an agent at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to check whether that person has since become a citizen. Fochs estimates that about 20% of people not marked as U.S. citizens in the system are confirmed by DHS to be noncitizens. She refers those cases to local law enforcement, she said.

Fochs takes the extra confirmation step, she said, because the state’s current system, where people swear under penalty of perjury that they’re citizens, doesn’t require any verification after the fact.

“If nobody’s looking, nobody’s ever going to be prosecuted, right?” she said on Friday. “They could check the box and sign their name, but if nobody has the ability to then take the next step and check it, you could do it all day long. The penalties don’t matter. So we need to check it to make sure that people are being honest.”

Several other clerks told Votebeat they had never heard of the lookup tool, or if they had, that they weren’t using it to check for voters’ citizenship status.

One clerk who discussed the system with Fochs, Oconomowoc City Clerk Diane Coenen, expressed concern over the potential for noncitizens to vote and face penalties, but said she won’t be using the lookup tool because the city lacks staffing to look up every voter in the growing community, and she doesn’t want to use it only in certain cases.

Transportation Department says records aren’t current

Department of Transportation spokesperson John DesRivieres declined to comment.

But the agency acknowledged in a recent legal filing that its citizenship data isn’t a reliable tool to check for people’s current citizenship status.

Responding to the lawsuit claiming that the department should share citizenship data with the election commission, the agency said it doesn’t have current citizenship information, but rather just “outdated information about the status of applicants for driver licenses and state ID cards at the time of application.”

“Every year, thousands of lawful permanent residents in Wisconsin become naturalized citizens, and these individuals generally have no reason to update their citizenship status with DOT,” the filing states.

The often inaccurate data is why Fochs double-checks with someone from the federal Department of Homeland Security, she said.

Fochs said she was confident she wasn’t crossing any legal red lines because she checks the records of everybody registering to vote — not just in specific instances.

But Kono said she wasn’t so sure. “I would be worried about doing something that we haven’t been told or advised to do,” she said.

An ID form asks for proof of citizenship

In Wisconsin, noncitizens with legal status, such as green card holders and lawful temporary visitors, can get Wisconsin driver’s licenses and state-issued IDs just as U.S. citizens do.

There are currently about 135,000 non-expired IDs and driver’s licenses issued to people who were noncitizens at the time of their application, the Department of Transportation’s legal filing says. But sharing their records with the Wisconsin Elections Commission would be illegal under federal privacy laws, the filing says.

There is a separate, free ID for voting that state residents can apply for. Typically, those applying for that card need to provide proof of citizenship. However, people without proof can still request one of those IDs by filling out a separate form that asks them for their identifying information. Lying on that form is punishable by a six-month jail sentence and $1,000 fine.

And as Kono said, people registering to vote are asked whether they’re citizens, and the form instructs them not to fill it out unless they are. Lying on that form constitutes a felony offense, with penalties of up to 3½ years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Few noncitizens appear willing to risk that penalty.

A Brennan Center for Justice analysis found that election officials overseeing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election referred about 30 incidents of potential noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. A Heritage Foundation analysis of election fraud cases nationwide found two dozen prosecuted cases of noncitizens voting in the last 20 years.

Why immigrants are a more vulnerable target

After his loss in 2020, Trump and his allies helped promote claims that corrupt election officials and voting machine companies rigged the election in Democrats’ favor. They were sued over that messaging, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements.

Meanwhile, of the dozens of lawsuits Trump filed after his 2020 loss, none succeeded in overturning election results in the swing states he lost.

This election, Trump and his allies have turned their attention from voting machine companies to noncitizens, a group that’s less organized and perhaps less likely to sue for false claims.

Burden, from UW-Madison, said suspicion of noncitizen voting could be what drives post-election lawsuits if Trump loses.

“There are millions of noncitizens living in the U.S.,” Burden said. “There’s some living in every swing state, more than 100,000 in Wisconsin. And that might be the focus of at least litigation or outrage after the election.”

But Burden said noncitizens are unlikely to vote in any significant numbers given the penalties they would face.

“It’s a lot of risk involved for a very little benefit, to be casting one vote in an election where there might be 3 million votes cast for president in the state,” he said.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera Action, said that whether they are in the country illegally or legally, with visas or lawful permanent resident status, immigrants typically know they can’t vote, and she organizes voter education sessions to make sure noncitizens know they can’t cast a ballot.

“The stakes are so high, they don’t want to vote,” she said. “They don’t want to end up with felony charges or jail time. It would affect their ability in the future to adjust their status, and obviously people don’t want that.”

The few instances of noncitizens getting charged after voting are generally a result of confusion about who’s eligible to vote, she said.

Neumann-Ortiz said the voters likely to bear the brunt of the accusations or suspicion are lawful voters.

“My concern is that all of this anti-immigrant rhetoric is really a way to gin up the MAGA base so that they show up at different polling sites and racially profile voters and try to intimidate or harass people from voting,” she said. “This is absolutely intended to disenfranchise eligible voters through the challenge process.”

In Wisconsin, election officials and voters can challenge somebody’s eligibility to vote based on assumptions about their age, residency, felony status, and citizenship, among other things. But a challenge “based on an individual’s ethnicity, accent, or inability to speak English is unacceptable,” an election commission manual states.

It’s highly unlikely that enough noncitizens would vote to swing the outcome, Burden said, but it could lead Republicans to say — as Trump baselessly did in 2019 about alleged noncitizens on the voter roll in Texas — that the few people they caught are just the “tip of the iceberg.”

While conservatives’ messaging could lead to increased ballot challenges, Neumann-Ortiz said it could have an unintended consequence.

“It’s offensive. It’s racist,” she said. “It’s not true, and it certainly does motivate people who are eligible to vote, whether naturalized U.S. citizens or U.S. citizens who are children of immigrants. It certainly does motivate them to turn out to vote and challenge that kind of hate mongering and disinformation.”


This story was originally produced by Alexander Shur of Votebeat Wisconsin as part of the Rural News Network, an initiative of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), supporting more than 475 independent, nonprofit news organizations.


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Lawmakers in Annapolis plan to introduce a bill to require a special election if a lawmaker is appointed to a seat in the first half of their term.

Maryland's constitution requires the political party committee in the district the former lawmaker represented to pick a replacement to fill the seat. The recommendation then is sent to the governor, who usually approves the person.

Del. Linda Foley, D-Montgomery County, the sponsor of the bill, said voters are sometimes represented by an appointed lawmaker for as long as four years.

"You end up with a rather large percentage of the General Assembly then being appointed and not elected and not facing the voters," Foley pointed out. "This has been an ongoing debate about whether this is a democratic way to replace people."

Nearly a quarter of state legislators in Maryland, including Foley, started in the legislature by political appointment, rather than an election.

The bill would not do away with the appointment process entirely. State legislators serve four-year terms, running in midterm elections. An appointment would be made, though any lawmaker appointed in the first half of the term would have to run in a special election held during the Presidential primary and general elections.

Foley emphasized the bill is not meant to fill every vacancy with a special election, a process she said would be costly.

"There is a cost factor to holding elections all the time and it's not insubstantial," Foley acknowledged. "Not to say that you can put a price on democracy, but you do have to consider what's the cost of doing this. Two years in office without having to face the voters isn't as problematic as four."


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By Marilyn Odendahl for The Indiana Citizen.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Indiana Citizen-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

For St. Joseph County Circuit Court Clerk Amy Rolfes, the statistics only confirmed what she had been seeing and hearing from voters in the days and weeks leading into the Nov. 5 election.

Nearly 59,000 registered voters in the Northern Indiana county cast a ballot either by mail or by going to the polls before Election Day, topping the number of voters who visited the polls on Nov. 5 by more than 5,000.

However, Rolfes already knew early voting was popular by the public's reaction to St. Joseph County's third early-voting site that was opened this year for the first time. The new polling place was opened two weeks before the general election in Center Township's public library, located in the southern portion of the county.

The site was busy every single day it was operating, Rolfes said, and voters were thanking the staff giving them a convenient place to vote.

"Clearly the voters have spoken," Rolfes said. "They enjoy early voting."

The final vote tallies from the November election show the popularity of early voting was similar across the state to what Rolfes saw in St. Joseph County. According to data from the Indiana Secretary of State, 1.6 million eligible Hoosier voters - 54% of all who cast a ballot in the 2024 general election - voted either absentee or in person prior to Election Day. Comparatively, 1.87 million registered Indiana voters - 61% of those who voted - went to the polls early in the 2020 general election.

Despite the early voting numbers, Indiana's overall voter participation slipped this year. The secretary of state reported that 4.84 million Hoosiers were registered to vote in November, which is 86,085 more than were registered in November 2020. However 2.97 million, or 61%, voted in the 2024 general election, which is 94,349 fewer than the 3.07 million, or 65%, who voted four years ago.

Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, said she is disappointed that lawmakers are not doing more to improve the state's voter turnout numbers. Changes that would enable more Hoosiers to vote include same day voter registration, extending voting hours, and prohibiting candidates and their supporters from being any closer than, at least, 100 feet from the entrance of a polling site on Election Day.

"That's frustrating when clearly we have a big problem with turnout and zero problems in term of (election) security, yet our policymakers continue to make voting more restrictive in the name of making it more secure," Vaughn said. "We should be opening it up in the name of getting more people involved."

Demand continues for early voting

Like St. Joseph County, Clark County in Southern Indiana opened another early voting site for the November election.

Clark County Circuit Court Clerk Ryan Lynch said the second polling place, at the R.E.M.C. building along U.S. 60, was a more convenient option for voters in the middle and northern parts of the county. They did not have to travel to the courthouse in downtown Jeffersonville to vote.

Lynch said he believes the additional polling location motivated more people to vote early. Although the 22,522 voters in Clark County who voted either by mail or in-person before Election Day was down from the 28,666 who cast an early ballot in 2020, he does not expect interest in early voting to wither.

"I think we should definitely plan for big turnouts for early voting and put more resources into that to be prepared," Lynch said.

After the Marion County Election Board voted against extending early voting by two hours in the morning, Marion County Circuit Court Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell kept the polling site in the City County Building open until 10 p.m. the Saturday and Sunday before the Nov. 5 election. She said she added hours in the evening to make voting more convenient and had noticed that individuals who voted in the evening were wearing uniforms, indicating they were shift workers in hospitals, law enforcement agencies and private companies.

"It worked," Sweeney Bell said, but she did not commit to extending the hours in future elections.

In Marion County, 165,186, or 46% of registered voters, cast an absentee or early ballot in 2024. That was down from the 215,931, or 55% of registered voters, who voted before Election Day in 2020.

Not only were Hoosiers voting early this year, but they were, apparently, seeking answers to their voting questions sooner.

Ami Gandhi, director of strategic initiatives and the Midwest Voting Rights Program at the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, said during the early-voting period, more Indiana voters were calling the 866-OUR-VOTE election protection hotline the CLCCR established. Also, they were calling before the voter registration deadline passed and before absentee voting began.

"Across the board, we heard from voters in many different parts of the state who have an interest in expanded access to early voting, including voters who wanted more locations in their county (and) voters who were seeking expanded hours and who were shocked, and at times upset, by the relative early end time to early voting on any given day," Gandhi said.

A 'chilling impact,' low turnout

Wells and Whitely counties recorded the highest turnout rates in Indiana at 73% each in November. Marion and St. Joseph counties tallied the lowest turnout rates in the state at 55% each.

Sweeney Bell was disappointed by her county's low turnout. She said the first hour the polls were open on Election Day, about 40,000 people voted in Marion County; however, the rush of voters that usually comes between 4 and 6 p.m. never materialized.

"I'm baffled when people have such power and choose not the exercise it," Sweeney Bell said, adding that voting is essentially asking people who they want making the decisions that will affect every part of their lives. She said she is disappointed and not sure why people chose to stay home, rather than go vote.

"If I knew why, I could do something about it," Sweeney Bell said.

Rolfes tried to encourage voting in St. Joseph County by producing a couple of educational videos. She was allowed to use the local public television station's studio for an hour and half and she made four "super nerdy" videos, providing instruction on such things as voting by mail and using the voting machine to cast a ballot.

"Voting information is key to increasing voter turnout," Rolfes said.

Vaughn, of Common Cause Indiana, said she believes some new voters and naturalized citizens did not go to the polls this year because of the claim by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales about noncitizens voting in state elections. The two elected officials announced a few weeks before the Nov. 5 election, that they had asked the federal government to verify the citizenship status of 585,774 individuals on Indiana's voting rolls.

Calling the move by Rokita and Morales a "political stunt," Vaughn alleged the whole point of creating the list and the making announcement was to have a "chilling impact" to discourage people from voting. She said the election protection hotline did not get any calls from individuals who had their citizenship status challenged when they tried to vote, but some new voters did call the CLCCR hotline with concerns about causing trouble if they cast a ballot.

"How widespread that (was), I can't really say, but we, at least, heard from a few people and I've done this long enough to know when you get a few calls, there are many more people who didn't call," Vaughn said. "They just stayed home."

Intimidation incidents rising on Election Day

Along with Indiana voters asking for the location of their polling place and what they should do if the poll book does not have them listed as a registered voter, Gandhi said the election protection hotline also received calls about voter intimidation and aggressive electioneering at some polling places.

Reports of intimidation included Hamilton County, where a group of individuals were standing outside a polling place waving Make America Great Again flags and harassing voters, according to CLCCR and Vaughn.

Sweeney Bell said in Marion County, poll worker training was updated to include de-escalation techniques. The additional instruction was in response to the false rhetoric about insufficient election security and ineligible voting, she said.

"I have no worries about the security of the ballot," Sweeney Bell said. "I worry about the security of the poll workers."

That training appears to have helped defuse an incident at a Marion County polling place that is still being investigated and could result in criminal charges. According to Sweeney Bell and Vaughn, a man became belligerent and shouted profanities, after he was told he had to remove his Make America Great Again hat and turn his T-shirt, which identified a specific candidate, inside out. The man took off his shirt, revealing he was carrying two guns and a knife. The police were called and the poll workers were able to get the man through the voting process as quickly as possible so he left with harming anyone.

Sweeney Bell said a report detailing what happened is still being compiled. The Marion County Election Board is scheduled to meet Dec. 12, she said, and the members will talk about the incident.

"I don't think it's over," Sweeney Bell said.

In Clark County, Lynch said poll workers at one voting site were also able to defuse a situation on Election Day. Someone came to the polling place and wanted to sit and watch the machine that tabulates all the ballots. The workers at the site enlisted help from the clerk's office and the staff was able to mitigate the situation so the individual left and police did not have to be called, he said.

Vaughn said the misinformation and intimidation has gotten "exponentially worse" since 2016. Indiana's laws do not provide much protection or prevention of escalating situations, she said, noting the state allows people to electioneer within 50 feet of the polling place, one of the shortest distances in the country, and while the state permits voting sites to restrict weapons and post signs, the statute has no teeth, so officials can do little if anyone violates the restrictions.

"People (are) being very hostile to voters who they perceive to be making different choices from them," Vaughn said. "Hoosiers need to practice a lot more tolerance during election season than we have been. It just seems to be getting worse each presidential election year. We desperately need somebody to bring the temperature down."


Marilyn Odendahl wrote this article for The Indiana Citizen.


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As 2025 begins, there will be a record number of women serving in state legislatures nationwide.

More than 2,400 women will hold state legislative offices, representing more than 33%. Maine ranks ninth in the nation for statehouse gender parity with women holding 43% of seats.

Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, is pleased the trend is moving in the right direction.

"We need to see bigger jumps in terms of the numbers of women running and then getting elected in order to get closer to parity," Sinzdak pointed out. "We're certainly making progress but there's a ways to go."

Sinzdak explained when women run for office, they win, and it is good for democracy. She noted research shows women are more likely to build consensus among lawmakers and work across the aisle.

The election of Republican Kelly Ayotte as New Hampshire's next governor means a record 13 women will serve as a state chief executive next year, including Maine Gov. Janet Mills. Sinzdak argued the women serve as role models for other women to run for public office but cautioned recruitment efforts for women candidates are still lacking.

She acknowledged caregiving responsibilities often prevent women from running, along with the double standard they face from the public.

"Voters want them to be likeable as well as tough," Sinzdak observed. "Whereas for a lot of male candidates, they don't necessarily need to be likable they just need to be seen as being able to do the job."

Sinzdak emphasized women bring their unique life experiences to the job. In Maine, women lawmakers were instrumental in passing the state's new Paid Family and Medical Leave program and codifying reproductive freedoms into law. Still, the gains for women in statehouses nationwide come as Vice President Kamala Harris failed in her effort to become the first woman president.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.


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