Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins confirmed on Wednesday that none of the 14,375 voters who received letters from his office seeking to confirm their citizenship status will be removed from the state’s voter rolls.
Goins confirmed in a Tuesday statement to The Associated Press that his office’s June 13 letter to voters, which requested information about their citizenship, “did not threaten to remove a person from the voter list if a person does not respond” and then confirmed to the outlet, “[n]o one will be removed from a voting list for not responding to the June 13 letter.”
According to the outlet, Goins’ office sent a subsequent letter to inform the original recipients they would not face removal from the voter rolls. The initial letter faced opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Tennessee chapter of the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC), and other activists.
Goins (pictured above) previously told Tennessee lawmakers in a letter that recipients of the letters who did not respond would not be removed from the voter rolls, according to The Guardian, which noted the Tennessee primary elections are scheduled for August 1. Federal law prohibits “systematic efforts to remove voters” within three months of an election.
A spokesman for the Tennessee Secretary of State told The Tennessee Star that Goins sent the June 13 letter to “let any potential non-U.S. citizen improperly registered to vote know this and remove himself or herself from the voter rolls,” and described the effort as “an important step in maintaining election integrity.”
The Star confirmed that 3,193 recipients replied with evidence of citizenship, and an additional 307 requested to be removed from voter rolls. This means that about a quarter of recipients replied approximately one month after the letters were sent.
The latest update comes just one week after the U.S. House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, with just five Democrats voting in favor. This act would require states to obtain proof of citizenship from individuals prior to allowing them to vote in federal elections.
While Democrats largely claim the legislation is unnecessary, as it is already illegal to vote in federal elections without U.S. citizenship, a May analysis by Just The News found hundreds of illegal immigrants are on voters rolls throughout the country.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Voting Booth” by Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0.
