Michigan proof-of-citizenship question fails to gain House support

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An attempt to get a proof-of-citizenship requirement for would-be voters onto the 2026 ballot failed along party lines Thursday in the Michigan House — a blow to the GOP-backed effort, but likely not the final word.

The measure would require new Michigan voters — and almost certainly some current ones — to provide documents proving they are US citizens before they can cast a ballot in the state. The measure’s sponsor, state Rep. Bryan Posthumus, a Republican from Rockford, said the resolution “is a common-sense way to close a massive loophole in our current system.”

The vote on House Joint Resolution B needed two-thirds approval, or at least 74 votes, to pass the House. Republicans control the state House, but only narrowly, and at least 16 Democrats would have needed to vote yes. 

None did. 

Democrats said the proposal would disenfranchise significant swaths of voters and make it harder to cast a ballot. 

“We can always do more to make our elections more secure, and we should,” Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou, a Democrat from East Lansing, said during the debate Thursday. “But we don’t have to make it harder to vote to make our elections more secure.”

Related:

• Bench warrant issued after accused noncitizen voter misses Michigan court date
• Citizenship, voter ID proposal gets OK for petition drive
• Michigan: 15 noncitizens suspected of voting in presidential election

If the vote had succeeded, the measure would have gone next to the Democratic-controlled Michigan Senate, where it faced steep odds. 

Still, the effort to get a proof-of-citizenship requirement before Michigan voters, part of a national push by Republicans across the country, isn’t dead yet. Republicans in the House voted to reconsider the vote another day, meaning that if Republicans can win enough bipartisan support, they still could get it through the House. 

And there is another route. The Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights, a group that has challenged previous statewide efforts to expand voting rights, won approval of its petition language last month. 

If the committee, working under the name “Prove It, Michigan,” is able to collect nearly 450,000 valid signatures from registered voters across the state, voters would then have to make a decision on the proposal. It’s not clear if the group is gathering signatures yet, but it only has until mid-October to do so.

Noncitizen voting is rare and already illegal. Federal law requires someone to attest that they are a citizen in order to register, but it stops short of requiring documentary proof. Republicans at the state and federal levels are supporting efforts to require such proof, including through the SAVE Act, federal legislation that has passed the US House but faces long odds in the Senate.

HJR B sought to ask voters in the 2026 election whether they want the state to require new voters to prove their citizenship before registering. The measure as written would also require those already on the voter rolls to prove their citizenship if the state can’t independently verify it.

The proposal doesn’t spell out what documentation would be required to prove citizenship, instead requiring the state Legislature to work through those requirements if the proposal passes. It also has some provisions requiring the state to provide free documentation to those who need it due to hardship, but doesn’t specify how that will work.  

In Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, announced last month that a state review found 15 new noncitizens who may have cast ballots during the 2024 general election. 

That’s in addition to the case of Haoxiang Gao, a 20-year-old University of Michigan student from China who has become the face of noncitizen voting in the state after registering and voting the same day. Gao is facing felony charges for that. As first reported by Votebeat, he now also faces a bench warrant and arrest after failing to show up for court last week.

Across the country, noncitizen voting is unusual. A 2024 review in Ohio found fewer than 600 of the 8 million people registered in the state were not citizens. In that instance, 138 of those people had potentially voted in the last year, officials said. A similar 2024 review in Georgia found that 20 of the more than 8.2 million people registered to vote there aren’t U.S. citizens. Only nine of those 20 had voted in previous elections, state officials said.

Michigan is far from the only state considering a proof-of-citizenship requirement. Arizona has long enforced such a requirement for state and local elections, and New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Louisiana have more recently passed them. Texas has been moving along on Senate Bill 16, which is modeled after Arizona’s citizenship requirements. Other proposals have been considered in statehouses across the country, including Missouri, Indiana, Utah. and elsewhere, and many are still pending.

There’s also the federal push. Republicans have been rallying around the SAVE Act, which would introduce a proof-of-citizenship requirement at the national level. President Donald Trump in March issued an executive order that directed the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to require documented proof of citizenship from those registering to vote, but that was blocked by a federal judge last week.

On the floor of the Michigan House on Thursday, much of the debate followed party lines.

At a February news conference, Democrats, led by Benson, promised to introduce legislation to fix potential loopholes that could allow noncitizen voting. They have not yet proposed a bill.

The final vote Thursday was 58-48 along party lines with a few Democrats absent.

Speaking after the vote, Posthumus told Votebeat he intends to make sure his proposal will be on the ballot, one way or another. Citing an October 2024 Gallup poll that found 83% of Americans said they favored proof-of-citizenship requirements, he criticized Democratic lawmakers for opposing it.

“I’ve had some Democrats in the past tell me that they were strongly considering supporting it. People have said they support it,” he said. “I think the Democrat party had to fall in line. Unfortunately for them, it just happens to be on the wrong side of the vast majority of the population.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.