By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois voters casting ballots in the April 1 consolidated elections will not be required to show proof of U.S. citizenship, despite an executive order issued this week by President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, March 25, Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to implement and enforce a nationwide requirement that voters show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when they register to vote.
Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections, said in an email Thursday that under existing federal law, known as the National Voter Registration Act, voters only need to sign a sworn statement on their voter registration application that they are a U.S. citizen. He also said Illinois does not require voters to show any type of photo ID at the polls.
Among other things, Trump’s executive order directs the federal Election Assistance Commission to amend the federal voter registration form to include a space in which state or local officials are to record the type of citizenship document the applicant provides.
It also directs the commission to withhold federal election funds from states that refuse to accept federal registration forms containing the proof of citizenship information.
The executive order limits the types of acceptable documents to U.S. passports, state-issued driver’s licenses or identification cards that are compliant with the federal REAL ID Act, official military ID cards that indicate the applicant is a U.S. citizen, or a valid state or federal government-issued photo ID that indicates the applicant is a U.S. citizen.
It also directs the Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to review each state’s publicly available voter registration list, alongside federal immigration databases and state records to determine whether they are consistent with federal requirements that prohibit noncitizens from voting.
David Becker, an election law expert and director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said during a media briefing Thursday that he doubts the executive order will withstand an almost certain legal challenge because it goes beyond a president’s constitutional authority.
He pointed to Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives states the power to determine the time, places and manner of holding elections, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of (choosing) Senators.”
“What we have here is an executive power grab, an attempt by the president of the United States to dictate to states how they run elections, to dictate to them how they should exercise the power that is granted to them by the Constitution and to bypass Congress in doing so,” he said.
Since Trump’s first election in 2016, when he won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump has repeated baseless claims that large numbers of noncitizens are voting illegally in U.S. elections.
Shortly after taking office for the first time in 2017, Trump formed the short-lived Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to review claims of voter fraud, improper registration and voter suppression. But the commission disbanded in less than a year amid a flurry of lawsuits and pushback from states, including Illinois, over access to their voter registration lists.
Illinois law at that time prohibited the release of “any portion” of the state’s complete, centralized voter registration database to anyone other than state or local political committees or “a government entity for a governmental purpose.”
Dietrich said the state board has since begun making available to the public an abridged voter registration database that does not include voters’ complete home addresses.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
