“Although no state allows noncitizens to vote for its legislature, that could change. A state law allowing noncitizens to vote for the state legislature would automatically, as per the Constitution, make noncitizens in that state eligible to vote for Congress, even if the SAVE America Act were passed.”
— Bradley A. Smith, “The Constitution Could Let Noncitizens Vote,” Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2026
“To the extent U.S. citizenship has become a federal voting requirement, it is fortuitous, due only to the policy judgments of the individual states. It is not due to any valid exercise of authority by the United States Congress. That conclusion may surprise some. But if one supports the bedrock principle that it is essential that only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections, the only certain protection is a federal constitutional amendment.”
— Edward D. Greim, who argued the Louisiana redistricting case before the U.S. Supreme Court, with Graves Garrett Greim (2025)
“The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty-five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”
(The 17th Amendment establishes the same state empowerment to determine qualified electors for the Senate)
Raskin, Jamin B. “Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1993).
“[S]tate enfranchisement of noncitizens is neither forbidden by the Constitution, as is commonly assumed, nor compelled by it…Rather, this Article shows that noncitizen suffrage is a franchise issue reserved to the states by Article I of the Constitution.”
— U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), former law professor, Legal Alines, Local Citizens, University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1993)
“[T]he Elections Clause empowers Congress to regulate how federal elections are held, but not who may vote in them.”
— U.S. Supreme Court, Arizona vs. Inter Tribal Council, 9-0 (2013)
Mortellaro, Stephen. “The Unconstitutionality of the Federal Ban on Noncitizen Voting and Congressionally-Imposed Voter Qualifications.” Loyola Law Review 63, no. 3 (2017): 447. SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3039812
“More fundamentally, examination of the text and history of the Voter Qualifications Clauses reveals that states possess an exclusive power to determine who is ineligible to vote.”
— Stephen E. Mortellaro, The Unconstitutionality of the Federal Ban on Noncitizen Voting, Loyola Law Review (2017)
Hayduk, Ron. “Immigrant Voting Rights and the Quest for Universal Suffrage.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (2025).
“In fact, from 1776 to 1926, forty states permitted noncitizens to vote in local, state, and even federal elections..”
— Ron Hayduk, Immigrant Voting Rights and the Quest for Universal Suffrage, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (2025)
