NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee’s main elections office sent letters to more than 14,000 registered voters asking them to prove their citizenship, a move that alarmed voting rights advocates as possible intimidation.
The letters, dated June 13, warned that it is illegal in Tennessee to vote noncitizens and provided instructions on how to update voter information. The list was developed after comparing voter rolls with data from the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, Doug Kufner, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office, said in a statement Tuesday.
Kufner described the state Department of Homeland Security data as a “snapshot” of a person’s first interaction with that agency. Some may not have been U.S. citizens when they got their driver’s license or ID card, but have since been naturalized and “probably haven’t updated their records,” he said. Driver’s licenses in Tennessee must be renewed every eight years.
“Accurate voter rolls are a vital component of ensuring election integrity, and Tennessee law makes clear that only eligible voters can participate in Tennessee elections,” Kufner said.
The letter, however, does not reveal what would happen to those who did not update their registrations – including whether people who did not respond would be removed from the electoral roll. Kufner did not immediately respond to an email seeking clarification on whether voters were at risk of being removed.
Instead, the letter contains warnings that illegal voting is a crime and carries penalties of up to two years in prison.
Voting rights advocates began raising the alarm after photos of the letter began circulating on social media. Democrats have long criticized the secretary of state’s office for its positions on election issues in the predominantly Republican state.
“The fact that legal United States citizens and Tennessee residents are being accused of being ineligible to vote is an affront to democracy,” state Rep. Jason Powell, a Nashville Democrat, said in a statement. being burdened with disapproval of their own eligibility as a voter and threatened with arrest in a scare tactic reminiscent of Jim Crow laws.”
Powell and fellow Democratic Rep. John Ray Clemmons on Tuesday urged Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to investigate the matter.
Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat from Knoxville, said she was informed that one of the letter’s recipients included a “respected scientist in Oak Ridge” who has become a citizen and registered to vote in 2022.
“Maybe the state should verify citizenship with the federal government before sending threatening/intimidating letters to new citizens,” Johnson posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Other leaders encouraged those who received a letter to contact the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee for possible legal recourse.
“It is certainly capturing many, many, many eligible citizens and threatening them with criminal prosecution,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “I think it’s unfair. And I think it probably also violates a number of federal laws.”
The effort bears some resemblance to the implementation of a comprehensive election law in Texas, passed in 2021in which thousands of Texans — including some U.S. citizens — received letters saying they had been flagged as potential noncitizens who could be excluded from voting rolls.
Texas authorities had just settled a lawsuit in 2019 after a pre-search for ineligible voters, it flagged nearly 100,000 registered voters but improperly captured naturalized citizens. A federal judge who halted the search a month after it began noted that only about 80 people had so far been identified as potentially ineligible to vote.
