OPINION:

A recent ruling in a federal criminal court case poses both challenges and opportunities for voter integrity.

On Oct. 1, U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz dismissed an indictment of a noncitizen for voting in a federal election in Florida.

The accused woman appears plainly to have violated a federal statute enacted in 1996 by large bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate — yet Judge Leibowitz struck down the law itself as unconstitutional.

His action demonstrates why Congress should amend the Constitution to specify that only U.S. citizens may vote in federal elections.

Lest the ruling be attacked as the rogue action of an activist judge, Judge Leibowitz took great care in constructing his opinion. He asked respected former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement to serve as amicus curiae, with Clement’s firm filing a brief examining the constitutionality of the federal law.

Mr. Clement’s brief closely hewed to textualist principles, examining debates from the Constitutional Convention, the history of state voting laws and past Supreme Court cases. Mr. Clement concluded, and Judge Leibowitz agreed, that the federal criminal statute did not merely supplement existing state laws that prohibit noncitizen voting in federal elections.

Rather, Mr. Clement said, the statute interferes with and supersedes each state’s ability to define its franchise for federal elections, which, contrary to widespread belief, the federal government cannot do.

The U.S. Constitution’s qualifications clause explicitly reserves that power exclusively for the states.

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