Idaho’s top election official on Tuesday urged congressional lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to invest in federal election databases to help states verify citizenship status and other eligibility on voter rolls.
Secretary of State Phil McGrane joined chief election officers from Alabama, Louisiana, Ohio and Connecticut at a Subcommittee on Elections Hearing, to revisit the successes and challenges of the 2024 election.
“Specifically, we will be looking at what went well and what lessons we can learn from each of the secretaries in administering free and fair elections and how we can continue to protect and promote voter confidence,” Subcommittee Chair Rep. Laurel Le, R-Florida, said Tuesday.
A major focus at the committee was also on ensuring non-citizens can’t vote and the proposed federal Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, which would enact sweeping changes to voter registration laws.
McGrane highlighted an executive order that he and Gov. Brad Little signed over the summer directing the secretary of state’s office to take steps to ensure only U.S. citizens were voting in Idaho elections.
He said the office did a comparison of the state’s registered voter data and other federal databases, including information from the Department of Homeland Security, to ensure only eligible voters were included. However, this comparison and checking of data against federal information was not as easy as McGrane thought it could be. Idaho voters in November also overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment to exclude non-citizens from voting, although the state constitution already named citizenship as a requirement to vote.
“It’s not actually a program or a database. It’s a patchwork of varying databases that really was never intended for election integrity work,” McGrane told the subcommittee. “And I think one of the things this committee can do is invest in the tools that we need as states to ensure that our voter rolls are accurate. I think that’s something that all parties should be able to get behind is the accuracy in our voter rolls.”
McGrane faced questions from Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who asked if McGrane’s efforts to remove non-citizens from voter rolls had denied any citizens the right to vote, and how the office was able to do so effectively.
McGrane said he wasn’t aware of any citizens who had been removed or denied their right to vote since taking these actions. He said the office had to work closely with local law enforcement as well as federal authorities.
He later also highlighted that there was a potential gap in information regarding people who became citizens through their parents’ naturalization; McGrane said this information wasn’t recorded and election officials don’t have the tools to do verification for them.
Loudermilk also asked if McGrane thought whether non-citizens voting was an issue.
McGrane responded, “I think every American wants to make sure that their vote can count, and that their vote counts the same as everybody else, and that there is no one who’s ineligible participating in our elections. Because, as we know, anytime that happens, especially that razor thin election, like I mentioned earlier, it can cancel out somebody else’s vote. So I do think this is an issue for determining accuracy.”
McGrane’s office in October 2024 announced the state had found 36 “very likely” non-citizens who were registered to vote; none of them had voted in the May primary, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen faced pointed questions from a ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Alabama, who noted that the state faced a high rate of eligible citizens being affected by efforts to purge non-citizen voter registrations.
Approximately 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made “inactive” during the effort were legally registered citizens, the Associated Press reported. Sewell asked Allen how he would “ensure that you’re actually capturing voters that should be ineligible?”
Allen responded, “I will say that our staff is working extremely hard to make sure voter file maintenance is top of mind each and every day when we come into the office, and we will continue to make sure that only United States citizens are on Alabama voter files.”
McGrane also faced some questions from North Carolina Republican Gregory Murphy about a lawsuit against Idaho for its law eliminating student IDs from eligible photo identification for voter registration and at the polls.
McGrane said the law did not affect turnout and that 98.1% of Idaho voters use a driver’s license or state ID card when they vote.
Texas Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson questioned why a student ID would be ineligible when universities collect identifying information when students are enrolled. She didn’t directly question McGrane, but posited, “the whole point of ID is, here’s a picture. Here’s who you are. Are you who you say you are to go vote? What in the hell is wrong with using a student ID to vote?”
McGrane was not able to respond because it was directed at Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, who said in response, “nothing.”
The group is a subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration.
On Tuesday, April 8, 2025, at 2:00pm ET, the Subcommittee on Elections of the Committee on House Administration will hold a hearing titled, “Revisiting the 2024 Election with Secretaries of State.” The hearing will be held in room 1310 of the Longworth House Office Building.
