Here’s how Illinois election authorities guard against noncitizen voting
[July 24, 2026]
By Peter Hancock
SPRINGFIELD – Illinois election officials said this week they believe
the state’s voter registration are accurate and up to date and that
safeguards are in place to prevent non-U.S. citizens from inadvertently
becoming registered to vote.
Since 1982, Illinois State Board of Elections spokesperson Matt Dietrich
said, only 10 noncitizens have been found to have voted in an Illinois
election.
“That’s 10 cases in 44 years.” Dietrich told Capitol News Illinois,
referring to information published by the Heritage Foundation, a
conservative-leaning think tank. “Every two years, you have
approximately 5 to 6 million votes being cast. So, you’re talking really
about hundreds of millions of votes cast, with 10 prosecutions.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is currently suing the state board for
access to a complete, unredacted copy of the state’s entire voter
registration database. That would include sensitive information such as
dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security
numbers of all 8.3 million registered voters in Illinois.
The agency says it needs that information to ensure Illinois is
complying with federal requirements to regularly scrub the database of
people who should not be registered, including people who have died,
moved to a different address or people who are found not to be U.S.
citizens.
Similar lawsuits have been filed in dozens of other states and
Washington, D.C. So far, judges in 15 of those cases have ruled against
the department, finding it has no legal authority to demand access to
states’ sensitive voter data. No judge has yet ruled in DOJ’s favor,
although cases in Illinois and several other states are still pending.
DOJ has also threatened criminal prosecution of any state election
official anywhere in the country if it finds noncitizens have been
allowed to register or cast ballots.
Citizenship question
Under the National Voter Registration Act, also known as the “Motor
Voter” law, voters are not required to show proof of U.S. citizenship
when they register to vote. Instead, they attest, under penalty of
perjury, that they are U.S. citizens when filling out their voter
registration applications.
“And that attestation also contains language that tells them if they
provide false information, they’ll be subject to prosecution,
deportation, and denial of entry to the country should they ever try to
enter again,” Dietrich said.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, several
states have passed laws requiring proof of citizenship to register. But
courts have generally held that states do not have authority to enact
additional requirements for registration in federal elections.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in its upcoming term
that challenges an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship.
Meanwhile, a bill known as the SAVE America Act is pending before
Congress. The Republican-backed bill is supported by President Donald
Trump but is currently stalled in the Senate.
That bill would require people to show documentary proof of citizenship
when they register to vote as well as photo identification when casting
a ballot. It would also require states to take affirmative steps to
identify noncitizens who are registered to vote and to delete those
individuals from the voter rolls.
For most people, proof of citizenship could include a valid U.S.
passport or a certified birth certificate paired with a photo ID. But
critics argue it would impose significant burdens on certain individuals
including married women or anyone who has ever changed their name, or
people who were not born in a hospital and don’t have birth
certificates.
Automatic registration
One way in which noncitizens can inadvertently become registered to vote
is through automatic registration when applying for a driver’s license
or state identification card.
That came to light Tuesday when New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill
acknowledged an estimated 6,600 noncitizens were inadvertently
registered between June 2023 and June 2024 due to a software glitch at
that state’s Motor Vehicle Commission.
“Our preliminary analysis shows fewer than 400 individuals who were
newly registered for the first time because of the error voted,”
Sherrill said in a statement. “They were registered as Democrats,
Republicans and Unaffiliated voters and were scattered across the
state.”
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Illinois election officials say the incidence of noncitizens voting
in Illinois elections is extremely rare. (Capitol News Illinois file
photo by Peter Hancock)
Illinois experienced a similar glitch in late 2019 when an estimated 545
noncitizens were mistakenly entered as registered voters due to a glitch
in the automatic voter registration system that the state had adopted
just two years earlier. Of those, 15 individuals were able to cast
ballots, although three of those turned out to be citizens.
“That software glitch was fixed,” Dietrich said Tuesday.
He also said no prosecutions resulted from that error, and that
then-Secretary of State Jesse White issued letters to all of the people
who were mistakenly registered accepting responsibility for the error
and advising them not to vote in any election.
“We, along with the secretary of state (Jesse White at that time), spoke
to some legislative committees about this, explained what had happened,”
he said. “The secretary of state really re-did that whole system and
now, if you check ‘no’ on that attestation, you cannot go forward into
the automatic voter registration. Your driver’s license process can
continue, but your information will not be forwarded to us. So we
cleared that up.”
Voter list maintenance
Dietrich noted that in Illinois, the primary responsibility for keeping
voter lists accurate and up-to-date rests with local election
authorities, not the state.
Those include the county clerks in 101 of the state’s 102 counties. Cook
County has a separate Board of Elections. And eight cities in Illinois –
Bloomington; Chicago; Danville; East St. Louis; Galesburg; and Rockford
– have their own municipal boards of elections.
“They are responsible for maintaining their own voter rolls locally, and
what we do at the state board is we provide administrative assistance
for them to do that,” Dietrich said.
John Ackerman, the county clerk in Tazwell County who often serves as a
spokesperson for local election authorities, said the primary method
local officials use to clean up their voter rolls is by direct mail to
verify whether voters are still living at the same address.
In odd-numbered years, he said, his office mails a voter registration
card to every registered voter in the county.
“If that should be bounced back or returned as undeliverable – they’re
not forwardable – then that can help us initiate the process of removing
an individual from our rolls,” he said.
In addition, he said, in even-numbered years, state law requires local
authorities to send voters a reminder notice that they may apply for a
mail-in ballot for state and federal elections.
“With that being a letter to all registered voters, a certified letter
from our office, I utilize it to perform the purge as well,” Ackerman
said. “So in my county, I’m actually accomplishing that every year, and
there are other counties that have picked up and done that as well. But
not all counties do that. At a minimum, every county is doing it every
other year.”
In addition to direct mail verifications, Ackerman said, Illinois is
among 26 states, plus Washington, D.C., that share voter registration
and motor vehicle data through the Electronic Registration Information
Center, or ERIC. That system also receives change-of-address information
from the U.S. Postal Service as well as death notifications from the
Social Security Administration.
Dietrich said that between new registrations, change of address
notifications and death notices, local officials are constantly updating
their registration rolls, and the most current lists are uploaded to the
State Board of Elections nightly.
“Every day, the 108 local election authorities upload their own
databases because every day, no matter how small your county is, someone
else is registering, someone is being removed,” Dietrich said. “Things
are changing every day, so that data gets uploaded to us nightly.”
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
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