OPPOSING LOUISIANA’S GROUNDLESS ATTEMPTS TO DISENFRANCHISE VOTERS OF COLOR
By: Javon Davis, Associate Counsel, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Robert Weiner, Director, Voting Rights Project
Louisiana made headlines last month when its attorney general sued the United States Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”), demanding that it amend the federal voter registration form to require registrants to provide documentary proof of citizenship (“DPOC”). This lawsuit stems from a state law Louisiana passed in 2024 requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. The Lawyers’ Committee, along with the Campaign Legal Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, representing the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, League of Women Voters of Louisiana Education Fund, Voice of the Experienced, the Louisiana NAACP, and the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, sued Louisiana because the State statute required persons seeking to register to vote provide DPOC. Seeking to sidestep the lawsuit, Louisiana repeatedly asked the EAC to modify the federal form. The EAC refused, and Louisiana sued the EAC under the Administrative Procedure Act. We and the other plaintiffs from the original suit have moved to intervene. The motion is pending. The Justice Department has declined to represent the EAC, and the case is stalled while the government seeks to sort out that issue.
Louisiana is not alone in its effort to require DPOC to register. Florida, Mississippi, and a growing list of states have adopted similar measures. President Trump tried and failed to impose the requirement nationally by executive order and efforts in Congress have stalled in two separate attempts. Blocked at every turn, proponents are now pursuing the requirement state by state.
The driving rationale is that noncitizens are voting in droves and altering the outcomes of elections—but the evidence says otherwise.
Study after study, audit after audit, has shown that noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare. In September 2025, Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry—the architect of the state’s proof of citizenship law—conducted a sweeping review of 40 years of Louisiana voting records. The result showed just 390 noncitizen registrants, with only 79 voting in at least one election over four decades.[1]
In Michigan, a rigorous audit found just 15 people, who appeared to be noncitizens, had cast a ballot in the 2024 general election—representing 0.00028% of the 5.7 million votes cast.[2] In Tennessee, a 2025 review of 4.3 million registered voters found 42 potential noncitizens on the rolls.[3] Montana’s review found only 23 potential noncitizens on the rolls.[4]
These results are not an anomaly. After reviewing 42 jurisdictions following the 2016 election, the Brennan Center for Justice found that officials identified only 30 suspected cases of noncitizen voting that they believed warranted investigation.[5] Noncitizen voting, when it happens at all, is detected by existing safeguards and does not represent a systemic threat to our elections.
While requiring DPOC to register sounds like a modest ask, it is in fact a burden—often an impossible one—for millions of Americans. For most proponents, an acceptable DPOC document means a United States passport or birth certificate—two documents that many Americans lack or do not have readily available. Research conducted by the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement found that over 21 million voting-age citizens, more than 9% of the eligible electorate, cannot readily access any document that would prove their citizenship.[6]
Obtaining these documents also comes with hefty fees and time commitments. A first-time adult applicant for a passport must pay $165 in fees and must wait several weeks for it to arrive.[7] Birth certificates, theoretically the more accessible option, are far from free or simple to obtain. Fees vary by state but commonly range from $20-$40 or more after shipping and fees, with the process requiring weeks of processing time, a photo ID, and navigation of complicated bureaucratic hurdles.[8] For families struggling to pay rent and put food on the table, these costs can be a real deterrent to registering to vote.
The added cost to vote would not fall evenly. Research consistently shows that people of color are significantly more likely to lack access to DPOC compared to their white counterparts.[9] People of color in the United States have faced, and continue to face, systemic economic disadvantages—proof of citizenship requirements do not create these inequities, but they do compound them. Almost any requirement that disproportionately affects lower-income citizens also will disproportionately affect Black people and other people of color.
DPOC requirements also will disproportionately affect women. If a woman changes her name after marriage, she will need to update her voter registration—and under most DPOC laws (probably including Louisiana’s)—that update would trigger the proof of citizenship requirement. Her pre-marriage birth certificate will no longer match her new legal name—leaving her in an uncertain situation when trying to register or update her information. Navigating this new tangle of requirements will cost time and money that many women cannot spare.
Proof of citizenship requirements are a costly solution to a nonexistent problem. Evidence of widespread noncitizen voting simply does not exist. The cost includes not only the burdens described above, but also the large and well-documented population of eligible citizens who would be turned away under these rules for lack of paperwork. When Louisiana conducted its own 40-year audit and found fewer than 80 votes by alleged noncitizens, it did not pull back on its effort to impose DPOC. It sued the federal government to force the issue—a tactic that speaks volumes about the actual purpose of these laws. The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy. Conditioning that right on producing expensive documents that millions do not possess is not election integrity; it is voter suppression camouflaged in procedural language and fueled by distortion and fabrication.
In sum, the effort to make DPOC a prerequisite for voter registration has caused concern and confusion for voters around the country. Anyone with a voting question can call 866-OUR-VOTE to talk to a non-partisan legal volunteer.
[1] Piper Hutchinson, Louisiana Election Investigation Finds 79 Noncitizens Have Voted Since 1980s, La. Illuminator (Sept. 4, 2025), https://lailluminator.com/2025/09/04/louisiana-election-investigation-finds-79-noncitizens-have-voted-since-1980s/.
[2] Mich. Dep't of State, Michigan Department of State Review Confirms Instances of Noncitizen Voting Are Extremely Rare (Apr. 3, 2025), https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2025/04/03/michigan-department-of-state-review-confirms-instances-of-noncitizen-voting-are-extremely-rare.
[3] Sam Stockard, TN Secretary of State Finds 42 Possible Non-Citizen Voters, Out of State's 4.3 Million Voters, Tenn. Lookout (Nov. 3, 2025), https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/11/03/tn-secretary-of-state-finds-42-possible-non-citizen-voters-out-states-4-3-million-voters/.
[4] Micah Drew, Montana Secretary of State Says Feds Confirmed 23 Non-Citizen Voter Records, Daily Montanan (Mar. 17, 2026), https://dailymontanan.com/2026/03/17/montana-secretary-of-state-says-feds-confirmed-23-non-citizen-voter-records/.
[5] Brennan Ctr. for Justice, Noncitizen Voting Is Vanishingly Rare (Jan. 25, 2017), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/noncitizen-voting-vanishingly-rare.
[6] Jillian Andres Rothschild et al., Ctr. for Democracy & Civic Engagement, Univ. of Md., Who Lacks Documentary Proof of Citizenship? (Mar. 2025), https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/Who%20Lacks%20Documentary%20Proof%20of%20Citizenship%20March%202025.pdf.
[7] U.S. Dep't of State, Passport Fees, Travel.State.Gov (last updated Feb. 10, 2026), https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-apply/fees.html.
[8]How Much Does a Birth Certificate Cost? (2026), TrustedCare (Feb. 26, 2025), https://trustedcare.com/costs/birth-certificate-cost.
[9] VoteRiders, Documentary Proof of Citizenship and Voter ID Laws: Different Policies, Both Bad for Democracy (Mar. 6, 2026), https://voteriders.org/article/dpoc-vs-voter-id/.