Tennessee’s prime election official requested greater than 14,000 registered voters to show their citizenship in a vaguely worded letter final month in what voting and immigrant teams say is an try to intimidate voters.
The workplace of the Tennessee secretary of state, Tre Hargett, a Republican, despatched the letter to 14,375 voters on 13 June, weeks earlier than early voting was to start for the state’s August major. “Our workplace has obtained data that seems to point that your voter data matches with a person who might not have been a United States citizen on the time of acquiring a Tennessee license or ID card,” the letter says.
It goes on to remind the recipient that unlawful voting is a felony in Tennessee punishable with as much as two years in jail and a $5,000 tremendous. It requests that any one who obtained the letter who’s a citizen present proof, resembling a US passport, delivery certificates, naturalization papers, or different doc.
The letter gives no details about what occurs if somebody doesn’t reply. It additionally gives no data on how their names have been flagged for evaluate. Doug Kufner, a spokesman for Hargett, didn’t return requests for remark.
“It’s clearly supposed to intimidate individuals into taking themselves off the rolls,” mentioned Blair Bowie, a lawyer on the Marketing campaign Authorized Heart, one among a number of non-profits that wrote a letter to the state expressing issues concerning the mailing.
Jeff Preptit, a workers lawyer with the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, mentioned his group had heard from “numerous voters” who have been involved concerning the letter.
“It’s all new Individuals who’ve obtained this letter,” he mentioned. “It’s had the very distinct impact … of not solely simply complicated individuals, however inflicting concern, intimidating them, and making them really feel as if they’ve finished one thing criminally flawed for exercising their constitutional rights for registering to vote.
“I believe that this can be a basic instance of focusing on a constitutional classification of people to discourage them from exercising their constitutional proper to vote,” he added.
The request comes as Republican elected officers throughout the USA have sought to unfold concern of non-citizen voting to be able to undermine the credibility of American elections. It’s already unlawful for non-citizens to vote in federal elections and it’s exceedingly uncommon for non-citizens to vote.
Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have championed federal laws that will require proof of citizenship to register to vote (the invoice handed the US Home on Wednesday). In addition they need states to check their voter rolls with a federal database of non-citizens, one thing specialists have warned will not be a dependable method of detecting unlawful voters. Elon Musk and different conservative influencers have additionally unfold false claims about non-citizen voting.
In a letter to state lawmakers late final month, Mark Goins, Tennessee’s elections director, prompt that those that didn’t reply wouldn’t be purged earlier than the 2024 election. Federal regulation prohibits systematic efforts to take away voters inside 90 days of a federal election and Tennessee’s major for federal places of work is 1 August.
Goins mentioned the record of voters flagged was based mostly on a “snapshot” of non-citizens within the state’s driver’s license database. Officers in contrast full social safety numbers in driver’s license data with the state’s voter rolls to flag non-citizens who could be registered. Goins acknowledged in his letter that there could be individuals on the record who have been non-citizens once they bought or final renewed their driver’s license who had since change into naturalized and have been subsequently eligible to vote.
Different states have made related efforts to purge non-citizens on their voter rolls with disastrous outcomes. In 2019, Texas officers used motorcar data to flag what state officers mentioned have been practically 100,000 non-citizens on its rolls. It shortly emerged that the evaluation was based mostly on flawed knowledge and that greater than 20,000 naturalized residents have been included on the record. The Texas secretary of state wound up resigning and a federal choose known as the hassle “ham-handed”.
In 2012, Florida relied on driver’s license knowledge to flag what it mentioned have been 180,000 potential non-citizens on its voter rolls. The state in the end eliminated 85 voters earlier than abandoning the hassle.
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