Brad Raffensperger Wants Georgia Constitution to Make Plain That Only American Citizens Can Vote

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants members of the Georgia General Assembly to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to clarify that the state constitution permits only American citizens to vote.

Raffensperger, at a press conference Wednesday, said seeing this through was one of his top priorities when he ran for his seat in 2018.

“Fortunately, Georgia code already makes clear that only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in Georgia, but we are seeing disturbing trends across the country that makes this issue too important to be left up to future legislatures. Everyone should agree that only American citizens should vote in our elections in Georgia. Unfortunately, we are seeing what used to be a bipartisan consensus start to disappear around the country,” Raffensperger said.

“Earlier this year the Vermont legislature overrode their governor’s veto to allow non-citizen voting in municipal elections. Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., Illinois, and New York City have recently introduced legislation to allow non-citizen voting. Recent articles in The New York Times and also The Los Angeles Times both have argued that non-citizens should be allowed to vote in our elections.”

Hundreds of non-citizens have already registered to vote in California and Illinois due to glitches in those states’ voter registration systems, Raffensperger said.

“Allowing non-citizens to vote in some elections and not others will increase voter confusion and put additional burdens on election officials. At a time when our main goal should be to increase confidence in our election integrity and also our security of our elections, non-citizen voting would accomplish the exact opposite,” Raffensperger said.

“With Democrats in the U.S. Senate recently introducing legislation to give illegal immigrants legal status and Stacey Abrams saying the blue wave is undocumented, and liberal groups consistently opposing common sense citizenship checks during voter registration it seems clear that the goal of the proponents of non-citizen voting is to extend to all elections.”

Raffensperger said earlier this month that he updated voter lists to safeguard election integrity.

Georgia election officials sent nearly 200,000 notifications to voter files that have registered no contact with the state election system for at least five calendar years.

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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].