The SAVE Act would invalidate Georgia's Motor Voter law, and I'm sure other states have similar programs. This would severely impact ballot access, and would result in immediate lawsuits and undoubtedly be tied up in the courts for years. Republicans know this and therefore are willing to vote for it since the actual consequences are unlikely to show up soon. How cynical.
Now on the other side of the issue, there are places that allow non-citizens to vote in local elections: California, Maryland, and Vermont, along with D.C. NYC tried but it got yanked by the courts.
The issue is not one of ID or provisional voting, which would constitute ballot fraud if proven that non-citizens were registered to vote and did in fact vote. There's very few instances of that (like 0.001%), not enough to sway an election unless it was literally one vote. And if it was one vote, that's why we allow recounts and audits. And these illegal voters do get caught and face heavy sentences (especially in federal cases). There is a STRONG disincentive for foreign nationals to try it. the risk/reward is simply too high.
Enemy states are much better off spending money to promote the idea that illegal voting is commonplace to sow chaos in our elections (which they do).
Well, the internet and AI can easily help anyone figure out what to do to obtain the proper identification. I lost my birth certificate in a move and it wasn’t hard to apply for a new copy. Im not a boomer but a Gen X’er. If anyone needs it, it’s not that hard to ask for help or use the internet to figure out how to get the proper identification. I call BS on the availability and time frame.
For the love of all that's holy - consult your local or state government's website for instructions about how to obtain identification, and leave the AI to writing fan fiction.
We don't need to be wasting state employees' time with Grok hallucinations.
It's still putting a fee on voting: either by having to pay to acquire a birth certificate or a passport.
And it's going to be harder to get a passport with the reductions in personnel for processing passport applications.
The point is to create more friction to vote, which discourages people from voting. That's the point of the bill, not making our elections more secure (which are already very secure).
I do wish that provisions would be included to allow or even mandate that every State bear the cost of providing whatever ADDITIONAL documentation the SAVE Act would require. That would cut out 0.7% of the complaints from liberals. Maybe.....complaints, rage, hatred and hypocrisy are what liberals feed on.
You guys, come on, illegal voting is everywhere. We all know it because trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden. What better proof do we need?
I am curious though; trump votes by mail, so why is that good, while for the rest of us it is criminal?
Anyway, i cannot help but smile when i do find real stories about real criminals voting when they shouldn't. Here's the latest: Georgia Republican Party official voted illegally nine times, judge rules. A judge ruled this week that a top Georgia Republican Party official, who has promoted former President Donald Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, has repeatedly voted illegally. (Link provided): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-republican-party-official-voted-illegally-nine-judge-rules-rcna145563.
See, see, it does happen...what's scary is it wasn't done by an immigrant. It does seem to me an ever-present feature in trump's world of chaos: Fixing a problem that simply doesn't exist. If only he could/would work on the stuff he told us he was going to take care of.
I love how every liberal can find 3 cases of a Republican voting illegally, but when the convo is about illegal immigrants voting it's invariably "ZERO illegals have ever voted in history".... They must really believe that anyone other than them are incapable of independent thought.
Because I am a woman in the state of Florida to get a real ID I had to bring my birth certificate, my Social Security card, divorce papers, marriage papers, a utility bill and various other documents. To me, it is redundant to present my birth certificate and my real ID in order to vote. Since I had to present my birth certificate and all these other documents to obtain the real ID in the first place. Since I don’t and won’t fly or cruise there is very little reason for me to ever obtain a passport. To force me to get a passport in my opinion is a poll tax which is illegal under the constitution. Trump is desperate to end the filibuster and federalize the elections and neither can happen. Hopefully John Thune stands up yet again to this bull!
What else am I supposed to read? How does a FL driver's license not comply if it has a photo? Does a FL ID issued with all of the documentation you described have a photo?
This: If you don’t have an enhanced driver’s license, issued only by Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington, you’ll need your photo ID plus something like a birth certificate to prove citizenship. Conversely, you could use your US passport, but only about half of Americans have a passport.
Because I am married, the name of my birth certificate does not match the name on my real ID. Which means hauling in a bunch of other documentation that the people at the polls will not be able to determine whether they are real or not.
I looked it up and Florida does charge additional fees for EDLs, probably having to do with fingerprinting and background checks. A couple of things seem strange. Minors between 5 and 15 years old can get EDLs at a reduced cost. Non-citizen residents can also get EDLs. Looks like FL could, and probably would, make a few minor legislative changes to comply with the SAVE Act. Other states could do the same.
I supplied all that in order to receive my real ID. So now I should fork over a poll tax to get an EDL? No! I am bled dry. This turnip has no more to give. From your link: The cost to apply for an Enhanced Driver’s License (EDL) in Florida varies based on the age of the applicant. As of the latest available information, for applicants who are 5 to 15 years old, the fee is $60.00. For applicants who are 16 years old or older, the fee is $108.00.
Why is it that every proponent of liberal policies or breathless critic of GOP/conservative policies always use the most severe possibility as what we can certainly expect? I did not count the "May ... do this", "COULD ....... result in that", "MIGHT ......... cause this" in the opinion piece - but I'm sure it's far more common that "would or will". Typical liberal scare tactics. The reason that non-citizens voting is found by your favored studies to be "extremely rare" is precisely because once anyone is given a mail-in ballot or entered on a voting roll, there is essentially ZERO effort made to verify eligibility. Research how many rejected signatures there were in 2020 compared to any other election. But no, "nothing to see here". If Americans don't have faith in the outcome of elections, we have no Democracy. And don't tell me that Democrats or liberals have faith - at this time every election cycle, they are screaming "voter suppression", "Jim Crow 2.0" and all that crap - then when they win, all that bluster disappears and they claim elections are perfect. Pick ONE story and stick to it!
Too many disparate comments to address but it should be a simple matter for most states to adjust their voter registration requirements to comply with the SAVE Act. The uproar is unjustified. The REAL ID act of 2005 of requires compliant states to share documentation databases with other states. There should be sufficient data to verify nationality and to include that designation on driver's licenses or other acceptable forms of photo ID. Regarding the poll tax accusations, non-driver photo IDs should be free. As for driver's licenses, mine is free as is my fishing license because I am a veteran. I do not know what others have to pay except for my wife. Her last fee was $8.00.
Since I never paid much attention to the reasons for, or details in, the REAL ID Act, I checked it out online. This act should have been the real subject of Steve's "our government is nuts" post.
Before the 2026 midterms or 2028? Unlikely: look how long it took for the REAL IDs to come out.
And that would assumedly require that those without such an indicator on their ID provide some other form of identification that'd suffice, which is still another unnecessary cost when the states can currently check citizenship on the back-end.
If the Feds want to provide some form of national ID for free, then that's a horse that needs to be put before the cart.
A statement made without evidence. How are they useless when states can successfully check the status of the person registering to vote by their provided documentation?
The SAVE Act is basically all about registrations, not voting.
It's simple: people are amenable to requiring voter ID, provided that IDs are free and easy to get. That's not in this bill at all, and that's a deal breaker.
The point of the act is to try to solve a problem with dozens of votes per cycle, at the expense of millions of legitimate voters.
Why not? The University of Maryland study claims there are 21 million voters whose legal status is really unknown since they currently have no positive ID. And we have sanctuary locales with liberal bureaucrats who have no qualms about granting legal status to any resident.
Illegal voting is unlikely to sway an election, but it's possible. That could become more likely as the 50 million most recent illegals become more embedded in the population. The statement about women finding it difficult to obtain positive ID is pure BS.
"And we have sanctuary locales with liberal bureaucrats who have no qualms about granting legal status to any resident."
Sanctuary cities are NOT empowered to grant general voting status to undocumented people under their protection. They may grant undocumented folk (and immigrants in general) the ability to vote in local municipal elections, but that power extends no further, and is subject to overrides from the state government
If anyone thinks that illegal voting is happening at the polling place, the remedy is simple - request a copy of the completed Applications for Ballot for the precincts you believe were affected. Those documents will contain all the identifying information one needs (name, date of birth, residence, signature) to track down and prosecute cheaters.
There are some additional challenges with mail-in ballots, such as theft and voting on someone else's behalf, but states like Illinois have implemented robust notification systems to alert if that has happened. When my ballot is submitted (later today for me in a drop box), I'll receive a text and e-mail notification acknowledging receipt. If I get that receipt BEFORE I submit it, I can notify the local authorities that fraud is afoot.
Incidentally, when it comes to mail-in fraud, it's most often Republicans who are caught cheating, not your "liberal bureaucrats".[1,2]
Quit trying to use logic, common sense and reality to quell the fears of those living in the shadow of all things trump Chris. If the president says it's a problem then by God (at least those of the Christian Nationalist persuasion), it is indeed real (in their minds).
David is spot on...this is nothing more than voter suppression. They know what's coming this November and their only hope is to squash, cancel or ignore the results. Sorry to those loving the orange, you simply on the wrong side of the equation.
Individually verifying the validity of thousands of voter registrations after the fact is not a serious solution. Nor are vote recounts after the voter information is separated from the ballots except in cases of tiny vote margins.
I wonder how many workers and what type of software is required to provide the text and e-mail notifications you mention.
I'm not sure what your two news story links show other than some Republicans were caught in voter fraud. It might indicate that democrats are more adept at cheating.
You're correct that after the ballot is separated from the registration, you cannot connect an identity to a vote. (This is a fundamental point of a secret ballot.)
That said, it IS the paper trail you would use to start any investigation of wrong-doing. You can then see if the level of fraud is enough to throw out the election and run a new one, as NC had to do when they detected GOP tampering in close race.
If you want full-proof elections, you're not going to get those until there's a national ID standard with unambiguous citizenship markings that can be verified electronically. Poll workers will NEVER be equipped to properly adjudicate birth certificates, citizenship paperwork, and all the permutations of proof that establish one's right to vote. That's WHY it's done at registration by people who look at those documents every day, not by concerned citizens who volunteer a couple weeks every other year to work the polls.
We can verify WHO someone is and defer to the judgement of the dedicated state workers who establish eligibility. And since voter rolls are public, concerned citizens such as yourself have all the data you need to verify that the state workers are doing their jobs honestly and properly.
As for the notification software, it's pretty common and straightforward. I build more complex messaging systems for clients daily as a solo practitioner. (Just finished one before coming over to reply - it implements interactive educational content for new parents and their social workers on behalf of the states of Illinois and Texas.)
So the voter has to furnish (or enter, in some fashion, into a giant database) a cell phone number or an e-mail address to receive verification, and the ballot envelope is coded for scanning.
While they are doing that, why can't they furnish the other documentation required for a positive ID. My whole argument is that really good vote security requires the registration process and ballot access to be tightly controlled. Once the votes are cast and counted, there is no way to verify anything except how many ballots were cast and for whom.
"While they are doing that, why can't they furnish the other documentation required for a positive ID."
I did do that when I registered to vote. The state workers verified my information and determined that I was indeed eligible to vote.
There seems to be this belief that registration is broken, and somehow volunteer poll workers are going to make up for that brokenness at the polling place. In the absence of a well-recognized standard national ID card, that's just not going to happen. You're just going to explode the number of disenfranchised voters (and lawsuits), slow down and complicate the operations of the polling places, and make Election Day worse for everyone.
Now, if you doubt that the state workers are doing a proper job - voter rolls are public information and can be independently verified by third parties. If you think that poll workers are letting ineligible voters cast ballots, the spindle of Applications for a Ballot has a list of everyone (and in what order) who received ballots and what kind of ballot.
It's quite literally the status quo: receive a registration form, validate that the submitter is a citizen, finalize registration.
Ballots are validated as legitimate on arrival by checking the envelope identifier, the signature on the envelope, and the ballot identifier that is tied to the envelope. At that point, the envelope is unneeded and can be discarded and the ballot placed in the "Valid" stack. Any future scan of that ballot identifier will show it as being valid.
Except all that can be verified without declaring the ballot provisional is that the name appears on the registration roll. Up front controls are needed.
That's the back-end process that currently exists: you're not on the registration roll until the process is concluded - and that involves verifying the citizenship of the person.
OK. That was the expectation for driver's licenses under the real ID Law but for some reason it missed the mark and non-citizens received the blue star which I assume means only that one is in the USA legally. My thought is that it should be a simple matter to designate citizenship by two blue stars or a green star with a halo or whatever. Compliance should not be difficult.
The SAVE Act would invalidate Georgia's Motor Voter law, and I'm sure other states have similar programs. This would severely impact ballot access, and would result in immediate lawsuits and undoubtedly be tied up in the courts for years. Republicans know this and therefore are willing to vote for it since the actual consequences are unlikely to show up soon. How cynical.
Now on the other side of the issue, there are places that allow non-citizens to vote in local elections: California, Maryland, and Vermont, along with D.C. NYC tried but it got yanked by the courts.
The issue is not one of ID or provisional voting, which would constitute ballot fraud if proven that non-citizens were registered to vote and did in fact vote. There's very few instances of that (like 0.001%), not enough to sway an election unless it was literally one vote. And if it was one vote, that's why we allow recounts and audits. And these illegal voters do get caught and face heavy sentences (especially in federal cases). There is a STRONG disincentive for foreign nationals to try it. the risk/reward is simply too high.
Enemy states are much better off spending money to promote the idea that illegal voting is commonplace to sow chaos in our elections (which they do).
Well, the internet and AI can easily help anyone figure out what to do to obtain the proper identification. I lost my birth certificate in a move and it wasn’t hard to apply for a new copy. Im not a boomer but a Gen X’er. If anyone needs it, it’s not that hard to ask for help or use the internet to figure out how to get the proper identification. I call BS on the availability and time frame.
For the love of all that's holy - consult your local or state government's website for instructions about how to obtain identification, and leave the AI to writing fan fiction.
We don't need to be wasting state employees' time with Grok hallucinations.
It's still putting a fee on voting: either by having to pay to acquire a birth certificate or a passport.
And it's going to be harder to get a passport with the reductions in personnel for processing passport applications.
The point is to create more friction to vote, which discourages people from voting. That's the point of the bill, not making our elections more secure (which are already very secure).
I do wish that provisions would be included to allow or even mandate that every State bear the cost of providing whatever ADDITIONAL documentation the SAVE Act would require. That would cut out 0.7% of the complaints from liberals. Maybe.....complaints, rage, hatred and hypocrisy are what liberals feed on.
Voter suppression is the entire raison d’être of this whole exercise.
Your comparison to poll tax is right on point.
You guys, come on, illegal voting is everywhere. We all know it because trump lost in 2020 to Joe Biden. What better proof do we need?
I am curious though; trump votes by mail, so why is that good, while for the rest of us it is criminal?
Anyway, i cannot help but smile when i do find real stories about real criminals voting when they shouldn't. Here's the latest: Georgia Republican Party official voted illegally nine times, judge rules. A judge ruled this week that a top Georgia Republican Party official, who has promoted former President Donald Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud affecting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, has repeatedly voted illegally. (Link provided): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-republican-party-official-voted-illegally-nine-judge-rules-rcna145563.
See, see, it does happen...what's scary is it wasn't done by an immigrant. It does seem to me an ever-present feature in trump's world of chaos: Fixing a problem that simply doesn't exist. If only he could/would work on the stuff he told us he was going to take care of.
I love how every liberal can find 3 cases of a Republican voting illegally, but when the convo is about illegal immigrants voting it's invariably "ZERO illegals have ever voted in history".... They must really believe that anyone other than them are incapable of independent thought.
Because I am a woman in the state of Florida to get a real ID I had to bring my birth certificate, my Social Security card, divorce papers, marriage papers, a utility bill and various other documents. To me, it is redundant to present my birth certificate and my real ID in order to vote. Since I had to present my birth certificate and all these other documents to obtain the real ID in the first place. Since I don’t and won’t fly or cruise there is very little reason for me to ever obtain a passport. To force me to get a passport in my opinion is a poll tax which is illegal under the constitution. Trump is desperate to end the filibuster and federalize the elections and neither can happen. Hopefully John Thune stands up yet again to this bull!
Why do you think you will be forced to get a passport? I do not believe it.
Did you read the whole thing? Florida real ID does not comply with the SAVE act.
What else am I supposed to read? How does a FL driver's license not comply if it has a photo? Does a FL ID issued with all of the documentation you described have a photo?
This: If you don’t have an enhanced driver’s license, issued only by Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington, you’ll need your photo ID plus something like a birth certificate to prove citizenship. Conversely, you could use your US passport, but only about half of Americans have a passport.
Because I am married, the name of my birth certificate does not match the name on my real ID. Which means hauling in a bunch of other documentation that the people at the polls will not be able to determine whether they are real or not.
Thanks. I apologize.
I looked it up and Florida does charge additional fees for EDLs, probably having to do with fingerprinting and background checks. A couple of things seem strange. Minors between 5 and 15 years old can get EDLs at a reduced cost. Non-citizen residents can also get EDLs. Looks like FL could, and probably would, make a few minor legislative changes to comply with the SAVE Act. Other states could do the same.
https://www.stateregstoday.com/living/traffic-and-driving/application-for-enhanced-drivers-license-edl-in-florida
I supplied all that in order to receive my real ID. So now I should fork over a poll tax to get an EDL? No! I am bled dry. This turnip has no more to give. From your link: The cost to apply for an Enhanced Driver’s License (EDL) in Florida varies based on the age of the applicant. As of the latest available information, for applicants who are 5 to 15 years old, the fee is $60.00. For applicants who are 16 years old or older, the fee is $108.00.
Why is it that every proponent of liberal policies or breathless critic of GOP/conservative policies always use the most severe possibility as what we can certainly expect? I did not count the "May ... do this", "COULD ....... result in that", "MIGHT ......... cause this" in the opinion piece - but I'm sure it's far more common that "would or will". Typical liberal scare tactics. The reason that non-citizens voting is found by your favored studies to be "extremely rare" is precisely because once anyone is given a mail-in ballot or entered on a voting roll, there is essentially ZERO effort made to verify eligibility. Research how many rejected signatures there were in 2020 compared to any other election. But no, "nothing to see here". If Americans don't have faith in the outcome of elections, we have no Democracy. And don't tell me that Democrats or liberals have faith - at this time every election cycle, they are screaming "voter suppression", "Jim Crow 2.0" and all that crap - then when they win, all that bluster disappears and they claim elections are perfect. Pick ONE story and stick to it!
Too many disparate comments to address but it should be a simple matter for most states to adjust their voter registration requirements to comply with the SAVE Act. The uproar is unjustified. The REAL ID act of 2005 of requires compliant states to share documentation databases with other states. There should be sufficient data to verify nationality and to include that designation on driver's licenses or other acceptable forms of photo ID. Regarding the poll tax accusations, non-driver photo IDs should be free. As for driver's licenses, mine is free as is my fishing license because I am a veteran. I do not know what others have to pay except for my wife. Her last fee was $8.00.
Since I never paid much attention to the reasons for, or details in, the REAL ID Act, I checked it out online. This act should have been the real subject of Steve's "our government is nuts" post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REAL_ID_Act#Provisions
Before the 2026 midterms or 2028? Unlikely: look how long it took for the REAL IDs to come out.
And that would assumedly require that those without such an indicator on their ID provide some other form of identification that'd suffice, which is still another unnecessary cost when the states can currently check citizenship on the back-end.
If the Feds want to provide some form of national ID for free, then that's a horse that needs to be put before the cart.
Yeah, politics get in the way of what is best. Back-end checks are useless. The data should be available now. Cleanse the voter rolls.
A statement made without evidence. How are they useless when states can successfully check the status of the person registering to vote by their provided documentation?
It's too late after a vote is cast illegally. For new registrations it's fine.
The SAVE Act is basically all about registrations, not voting.
It's simple: people are amenable to requiring voter ID, provided that IDs are free and easy to get. That's not in this bill at all, and that's a deal breaker.
The point of the act is to try to solve a problem with dozens of votes per cycle, at the expense of millions of legitimate voters.
Why not? The University of Maryland study claims there are 21 million voters whose legal status is really unknown since they currently have no positive ID. And we have sanctuary locales with liberal bureaucrats who have no qualms about granting legal status to any resident.
Illegal voting is unlikely to sway an election, but it's possible. That could become more likely as the 50 million most recent illegals become more embedded in the population. The statement about women finding it difficult to obtain positive ID is pure BS.
"And we have sanctuary locales with liberal bureaucrats who have no qualms about granting legal status to any resident."
Sanctuary cities are NOT empowered to grant general voting status to undocumented people under their protection. They may grant undocumented folk (and immigrants in general) the ability to vote in local municipal elections, but that power extends no further, and is subject to overrides from the state government
If anyone thinks that illegal voting is happening at the polling place, the remedy is simple - request a copy of the completed Applications for Ballot for the precincts you believe were affected. Those documents will contain all the identifying information one needs (name, date of birth, residence, signature) to track down and prosecute cheaters.
There are some additional challenges with mail-in ballots, such as theft and voting on someone else's behalf, but states like Illinois have implemented robust notification systems to alert if that has happened. When my ballot is submitted (later today for me in a drop box), I'll receive a text and e-mail notification acknowledging receipt. If I get that receipt BEFORE I submit it, I can notify the local authorities that fraud is afoot.
Incidentally, when it comes to mail-in fraud, it's most often Republicans who are caught cheating, not your "liberal bureaucrats".[1,2]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/four-people-plead-guilty-north-carolina-ballot-probe-2016-2018-electio-rcna49534
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/matthew-laiss-trump-voting-pennsylvania-florida-2020/
Quit trying to use logic, common sense and reality to quell the fears of those living in the shadow of all things trump Chris. If the president says it's a problem then by God (at least those of the Christian Nationalist persuasion), it is indeed real (in their minds).
David is spot on...this is nothing more than voter suppression. They know what's coming this November and their only hope is to squash, cancel or ignore the results. Sorry to those loving the orange, you simply on the wrong side of the equation.
Individually verifying the validity of thousands of voter registrations after the fact is not a serious solution. Nor are vote recounts after the voter information is separated from the ballots except in cases of tiny vote margins.
I wonder how many workers and what type of software is required to provide the text and e-mail notifications you mention.
I'm not sure what your two news story links show other than some Republicans were caught in voter fraud. It might indicate that democrats are more adept at cheating.
You're correct that after the ballot is separated from the registration, you cannot connect an identity to a vote. (This is a fundamental point of a secret ballot.)
That said, it IS the paper trail you would use to start any investigation of wrong-doing. You can then see if the level of fraud is enough to throw out the election and run a new one, as NC had to do when they detected GOP tampering in close race.
If you want full-proof elections, you're not going to get those until there's a national ID standard with unambiguous citizenship markings that can be verified electronically. Poll workers will NEVER be equipped to properly adjudicate birth certificates, citizenship paperwork, and all the permutations of proof that establish one's right to vote. That's WHY it's done at registration by people who look at those documents every day, not by concerned citizens who volunteer a couple weeks every other year to work the polls.
We can verify WHO someone is and defer to the judgement of the dedicated state workers who establish eligibility. And since voter rolls are public, concerned citizens such as yourself have all the data you need to verify that the state workers are doing their jobs honestly and properly.
As for the notification software, it's pretty common and straightforward. I build more complex messaging systems for clients daily as a solo practitioner. (Just finished one before coming over to reply - it implements interactive educational content for new parents and their social workers on behalf of the states of Illinois and Texas.)
So the voter has to furnish (or enter, in some fashion, into a giant database) a cell phone number or an e-mail address to receive verification, and the ballot envelope is coded for scanning.
While they are doing that, why can't they furnish the other documentation required for a positive ID. My whole argument is that really good vote security requires the registration process and ballot access to be tightly controlled. Once the votes are cast and counted, there is no way to verify anything except how many ballots were cast and for whom.
"While they are doing that, why can't they furnish the other documentation required for a positive ID."
I did do that when I registered to vote. The state workers verified my information and determined that I was indeed eligible to vote.
There seems to be this belief that registration is broken, and somehow volunteer poll workers are going to make up for that brokenness at the polling place. In the absence of a well-recognized standard national ID card, that's just not going to happen. You're just going to explode the number of disenfranchised voters (and lawsuits), slow down and complicate the operations of the polling places, and make Election Day worse for everyone.
Now, if you doubt that the state workers are doing a proper job - voter rolls are public information and can be independently verified by third parties. If you think that poll workers are letting ineligible voters cast ballots, the spindle of Applications for a Ballot has a list of everyone (and in what order) who received ballots and what kind of ballot.
A decent primer on the topic:
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/why-is-voter-registration-data-public/
It's quite literally the status quo: receive a registration form, validate that the submitter is a citizen, finalize registration.
Ballots are validated as legitimate on arrival by checking the envelope identifier, the signature on the envelope, and the ballot identifier that is tied to the envelope. At that point, the envelope is unneeded and can be discarded and the ballot placed in the "Valid" stack. Any future scan of that ballot identifier will show it as being valid.
Except all that can be verified without declaring the ballot provisional is that the name appears on the registration roll. Up front controls are needed.
That's the back-end process that currently exists: you're not on the registration roll until the process is concluded - and that involves verifying the citizenship of the person.
OK. That was the expectation for driver's licenses under the real ID Law but for some reason it missed the mark and non-citizens received the blue star which I assume means only that one is in the USA legally. My thought is that it should be a simple matter to designate citizenship by two blue stars or a green star with a halo or whatever. Compliance should not be difficult.
Example from California:
https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/pdfs/voter-id-and-reg-requirements.pdf