Democrats and voting-rights activists are lambasting a push by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Secretary of State Diego Morales for a federal agency to review the citizenship status of nearly 600,000 registered voters.

The two Republican officials announced Thursday they made the request to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in a letter dated Oct. 11.

Review sought for 12% of Indiana voters

Rokita and Morales said they want the agency to verify the citizenship status of those who registered to vote in Indiana without providing state-issued forms of identification.

“Hoosiers deserve to know that only eligible voters are participating in our elections and that legitimate ballots are not being diluted by noncitizens,” Rokita said in a statement. “We are doing our part to provide this assurance.” 

The request seeks citizenship reviews of 585,774 voters — about 12% of Indiana’s more than 4.8 million registered voters.

That number potentially includes many voters who registered decades before such information was requested of those registering. Officials from Rokita’s and Morales’ offices did not respond to State Affairs’ questions about how long some of those people subject to review had been voting or whether the offices had evidence of noncitizens voting illegally.

Public affairs officers from Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately reply Thursday to messages from State Affairs about the request and how long it would take to complete such a review.

Democrats denounce request as intimidation

Democratic attorney general candidate Destiny Wells, who is challenging Rokita’s reelection bid, called the request “attempted voter roll purging” after early voting had already started and less than three weeks before Election Day on Nov. 5.

“This is an effort to scare voters from showing up and it will just further chill people’s constitutional right to vote,” Wells told State Affairs.

Indiana Democratic Party Chair Mike Schmuhl described the request as “another Republican stunt to question the legitimacy of the election if they don’t like the results.”

“We should not be spending taxpayer dollars to go after eligible Hoosier voters who may not have a state-issued ID because they live overseas, serve in the military, don’t have a car, or are disabled,” Schmuhl said in a statement. “Stunts like this are yet another example of why Indiana has been at the bottom for voter turnout during so many years of Republican rule.”

Rokita’s office calls request ‘commonsense’

The letter from Rokita and Morales said they were submitting the name and date of birth for each person for whom they were seeking citizenship verification.

Those are people who registered without providing a driver’s license number or a Social Security number; registered Indiana voters located overseas; and a separate group who registered without providing a driver’s license number.

“Although possession of a state-issued identification does not demonstrate that a person is a citizen, the fact that a person obtained such identification provides some assurance that their citizenship or immigration status may have been previously confirmed by a state official,” Rokita and Morales said in their letter.

The secretary of state’s office, which oversees statewide election policy, said the request was made “out of an abundance of caution” and called it a “non-intrusive way to identify what is believed to be a small number of non-U.S. citizens who have registered to vote in the upcoming election.”

The secretary of state’s office said the review would not result in removal of anyone from the voter registration list. 

“If non-citizens are identified on the voter rolls, this information will be made available to local election officials who may decide to investigate further or challenge voters,” the office said in a statement nearly nine hours after its initial announcement.

Representatives for Rokita and Morales did not respond directly to criticism of the request. Rokita spokesman Benjamin Fearnow said the letter “speaks for itself.”

“It is commonsense that we would check the citizenship of those that can’t provide a SSN, a Driver’s License or a state ID who live overseas,” Fearnow said in an email to State Affairs.

Julia Vaughn, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause Indiana, said federal law is clear that voters can’t be systematically removed from registration rolls within 90 days of an election.

Vaughn said she also was worried about the security of over a half-million voters’ personal information being submitted in the review request.

“These two elected officials should be inspiring confidence in our elections, not sending political press releases from their taxpayer-funded offices,” Vaughn said. “They should be above this kind of political stunt less than three weeks before the election.”

Update: This story has been updated with additional comment from secretary of state’s office.

Tom Davies is a Statehouse reporter for State Affairs Pro Indiana. Reach him at [email protected] or on X at @TomDaviesIND.

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