# Proof of Citizenship Requirement The **proof of citizenship requirement** — formally "documentary proof of citizenship" (DPOC) — is the demand that voters present physical documentation of U.S. citizenship (a passport, birth certificate, naturalization certificate, or Real ID-compliant driver's license) at the time of voter registration, replacing the current system in which applicants attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury on the federal registration form. This is the hub concept connecting several concurrent efforts: the [[SAVE Act]] (legislative path), [[Executive Order - Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections]] (executive path), [[America First Legal]]'s petition to the [[Election Assistance Commission]] (administrative-rulemaking path), and [[Kris Kobach]]'s Kansas experiment (the state-level precedent). All four converge on the same policy goal. The dismantling of the [[Election Assistance Commission]] in July 2026 is downstream of this concept — when the EAC refused to comply with the executive order's 30-day mandate to alter the [[National Voter Registration Act]] form, the commissioners became targets. ## The current system Under the [[National Voter Registration Act]] of 1993, the national mail voter registration form requires applicants to check a box affirming U.S. citizenship **under penalty of perjury**. False attestation is a federal crime carrying up to five years in prison and potential deportation for noncitizens. The [[Help America Vote Act]] added a limited ID requirement for first-time mail registrants but did not mandate documentary proof of citizenship for all registrants. Proponents of DPOC argue that attestation is insufficient and that noncitizens are registering and voting in significant numbers. The evidence does not support this claim. Studies consistently find that noncitizen voting in federal elections is vanishingly rare — estimated at 0.0001% of ballots cast. The [[Brennan Center for Justice]] found that in the 2016 election, officials in 42 jurisdictions that had investigated allegations identified only about 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million ballots. ## The three paths **Legislative: the [[SAVE Act]].** Introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) in May 2024, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act would amend the [[National Voter Registration Act]] to require documentary proof of citizenship for all federal voter registrations. The House passed it three times; the Senate failed to overcome a filibuster. As of July 2026, Speaker Johnson has announced plans to attach it to a budget-reconciliation bill to bypass the 60-vote threshold. **Executive: [[Executive Order - Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections]].** Signed March 25, 2025, EO 14248 directed the [[Election Assistance Commission]] to add a DPOC requirement to the national voter registration form within 30 days. Courts blocked key provisions; the EAC did not comply. **Administrative: the [[America First Legal]] petition.** On July 16, 2025, [[Stephen Miller]]'s [[America First Legal]] petitioned the EAC to amend its regulations and the national form to require DPOC. The petition drew over 350,000 public comments and support from 14 Republican state attorneys general led by [[Ken Paxton]]. The EAC opened a formal comment period but took no final action before its commissioners were fired in July 2026. ## The Kansas precedent The proof-of-citizenship concept was road-tested by [[Kris Kobach]] as Kansas Secretary of State. In 2013, Kansas implemented a DPOC requirement for voter registration. The result: over 30,000 eligible citizens were blocked from registering. In *Fish v. Kobach* (2018), a federal court struck down the requirement for violating the [[National Voter Registration Act]] and the [[Fourteenth Amendment]]'s Equal Protection Clause. The court found that Kobach could identify only 67 noncitizens who had registered over a 20-year period — while his law had blocked tens of thousands of eligible citizens. The Tenth Circuit upheld the ruling in 2020. Kobach's Kansas experiment is the empirical proof point: DPOC requirements block far more eligible citizens than noncitizens. The populations most affected are low-income voters, elderly voters, young voters, voters of color, and naturalized citizens — groups that disproportionately lack ready access to passports or certified birth certificates. The [[Bipartisan Policy Center]] estimates that roughly 9% of all eligible voters — over 21 million people — do not have easy access to documentary proof of citizenship. ## Why it matters for the KB Proof of citizenship is the contemporary iteration of a pattern as old as American democracy: using facially neutral procedural requirements to exclude specific populations from the franchise. The poll tax required everyone to pay — but was designed to exclude Black voters and poor white voters. Literacy tests applied to everyone — but were selectively enforced. DPOC applies to everyone — but disproportionately burdens the populations least likely to possess the required documents. The mechanism is different; the function is the same: [[Voter Suppression]] through administrative barrier. The concept also illustrates the multi-vector strategy: when one path is blocked (courts enjoin the executive order, the Senate filibusters the [[SAVE Act]]), the pressure shifts to another path (administrative rulemaking, reconciliation, dismantling the resisting agency). The dismantling of the [[Election Assistance Commission]] is not separate from the proof-of-citizenship project — it is the response to the agency's refusal to implement it. ## See Also - [[SAVE Act]] - [[Election Assistance Commission]] - [[National Voter Registration Act]] - [[Executive Order - Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections]] - [[Voter Suppression]] - [[America First Legal]] - [[Kris Kobach]]