Indiana officials question citizenship of more than half a million registered Hoosier voters

Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales and Attorney General Todd Rokita are questioning the citizenship of more than half a million registered voters about three weeks before Election Day.

The Republican officials sent a letter to the federal government with voters’ names and birth dates, asking it to confirm their citizenship status.

The 585,774 registered voters Morales and Rokita are questioning fall into three categories: those who registered without providing a driver’s license or Social Security number; registered voters located overseas; and those who registered simply without a driver’s license number.

Under federal and state law, you can register to vote using a paper form without having a driver’s license or Social Security number. First-time voters in that situation would have to show proof of residency for their vote to count.

And many voters located overseas are members of the military.

READ MORE: What do I need on Election Day? The general election is Nov. 5
 

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If the federal government does potentially flag people as non-citizens, federal law doesn’t allow counties to remove them from the voter rolls.

And there are questions about whether Morales and Rokita are allowed under state law to share voters’ birth dates with federal officials.

In a statement, Indiana Democratic Party Chair Mike Schmuhl called the letter a “Republican stunt to question the legitimacy of the election if they don’t like the results.”
 

Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.