The Trump Administration Is Empowering States to Verify Voters’ Citizenship
Realizing the Promise of a 28-Year-Old Idea (OK, My 28-Year-Old Idea)
By George Fishman on May 27, 2025
Former U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) stated on the House floor in February 1998 that “There are two ways of violating a voter’s rights. One is not to allow qualified voters to vote, and the other is to allow unqualified voters to vote and negate [the votes of] those qualified voters.” U.S. Rep. Ed Pease (R-Ind.) also stated on the floor that day that “[T]here is no more precious right of citizenship than the right to vote. When noncitizens falsely claim to be citizens in order to vote, this right is cheapened for everyone else.”
At the direction of President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) just announced that it will be empowering states and localities to prevent aliens from illegally voting by giving the states and local governments the ability to verify the citizenship of prospective voters by Social Security number (SSN). I am gratified that the Trump administration is taking this long overdue action. I’ll just note in passing that I first proposed it 28 years ago.
On March 25, President Trump signed an executive order (EO) — “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” — providing in part that:
To assist States in determining whether individuals are eligible to register and vote … . [t]he Commissioner of Social Security shall take all appropriate action to make available … Federal databases containing relevant information to all State and local election officials engaged in verifying the eligibility of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.
https://cis.org/Fishman/Trump-Administration-Empowering-States-Verify-Voters-Citizenship
