New Hampshire must relax proof of citizenship rules for voter registration, judge says

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A federal judge says New Hampshire must make voter registration easier by allowing applicants to attest to their U.S. citizenship if they don’t have the documents proving it.

Read more: The House GOP is pushing strict citizenship proof requirements for voters ahead of the midterm elections

The case was considered the first major legal test of the electoral reform pushed by President Donald Trump at the national level and won the support of many Republicans, although US District Judge Samantha Elliott said she had not decided whether the requirement to prove citizenship itself was constitutional. However, her ruling late Thursday night on a narrower issue involving New Hampshire’s law was important because it highlighted the potential risks of implementing strict requirements for voters to document their U.S. citizenship so they can cast a ballot.

Elliott found that changes made in 2024 to the state’s voter registration law unconstitutionally removed one method of proof — a voter’s sworn testimony attesting to citizenship.

“The evidence shows that this is the only method of proof available to a significant number of voters in New Hampshire,” she wrote.

The changes took effect last year, after former Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed the bill two years ago. The Attorney General’s Office said it intends to appeal the judge’s ruling, calling the citizenship requirements “a common-sense approach to voter registration and election administration designed to protect the integrity of our elections.”

The ruling was a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and other plaintiffs who argued that the changes that took effect last year were burdensome and unnecessary.

“New Hampshire’s elections have always been safe, secure, and accurate — and this law could have unconstitutionally and needlessly prevented thousands of eligible voters from casting their ballots,” said Henry Klementovich, deputy legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire.

Elliott said in her ruling that eliminating the affidavit option created a significant burden on voters and did little, if anything, to advance the state’s interests. She noted that a voter fraud expert found only 47 cases of illegal voting out of about 8.3 million votes cast between 1998 and 2024. During that period, perhaps only eight noncitizens cast ballots, she said.

“If illegal voting is rare in New Hampshire, illegal voting by noncitizens is essentially non-existent,” she wrote.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Coalition for Open Democracy, the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire, the Forward Foundation and Five Voters, called the state’s voter registration law one of the most restrictive in the country. During the town elections last fall, some voters had difficulty collecting passports, birth certificates or other proof of citizenship.

New Hampshire isn’t the only state with a proof of citizenship law for voters. Arizona, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming already have similar laws in effect, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Florida passed a law this year requiring documented proof of citizenship to vote, but it won’t take effect until next year.

A similar law in Kansas, which requires proof of citizenship for state and federal elections, was found in 2018 to violate both the U.S. Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act after it prevented more than 31,000 citizens from registering to vote.

Arizona created a two-tier system after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the state could not require citizenship documents for federal elections. In August 2024, the court allowed some parts of the state’s citizenship law to take effect as the legal battle continued in lower courts.

The ruling comes as Trump tries to push his citizenship bill, the Save America Act, through Congress. Voting rights advocates say such a federal requirement could disenfranchise millions of people. A 2025 University of Maryland study estimated that 21.3 million Americans eligible to vote do not have or have easy access to documents proving their citizenship, including nearly 10% of Democrats, 7% of Republicans, and 14% of people unaffiliated with either major party.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said he would reuse registrants’ voter affidavits to prove citizenship, but noted that the ruling does not affect other changes to the law for 2024, including the requirement that those registered to vote provide documentary proof of identity, age and address. Voters will also continue to be required to show proof of identification on Election Day.

Carr Smith reported from Columbus, Ohio.