The state of Indiana has rejected or canceled the voter registrations of more than 60% of immigrant Hoosiers challenged under a recent proof of citizenship law — not including several hundred with pending cases.
Voting rights advocates challenging the statute recently submitted the data to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana as part of their request for a pause on enforcement of the statute.
The League of Women Voters of Indiana, Common Cause Indiana, Hoosier Asian American Power and Exodus Refugee Immigration hired an election methodology expert to crunch state challenge data.
People with temporary lawful status can obtain temporary learner’s permits, driver’s licenses or ID cards using valid visas, asylum applications, temporary protected status applications, conditional permanent residency and other documents.
The credentials can remain valid for up to six years, even if a person’s citizenship status changes. But a 2025 state law relies on those numbers.
House Enrolled Act 1680 requires county voter registration officials to request proof of citizenship from everyone who uses a temporary credential number as part of their voter registration application. The law took effect July 1, 2025.
People who receive a notice have 30 days to provide proof — a birth certificate, U.S. passport, naturalization documentation, and so on — before their voter registration is rejected or canceled.
Officials identified 3,234 people to scrutinize for proof of citizenship, according to the analysis by Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida.
Officials were still processing 519 people at the time of McDonald’s analysis, while 113 other flags were found to be false positives, leaving 2,602 people for whom the process was completed.
Of those, officials decided 977 challenged voters provided proof of citizenship.
They rejected 644 prospective voters and canceled the registrations of 981 existing voters — or about 62% of the people processed. Those figures include people who didn’t respond to the notice for any reason, including if the U.S. Postal Service returned the notice as undeliverable.
The plaintiffs included McDonald’s analysis in their May 8 motion for a preliminary injunction, arguing that the law unfairly forces burdens on naturalized citizens with temporary credentials — “despite having already attested to their citizenship under penalty of perjury just like every other Indiana registrant” on the voter registration application.
“Absent an injunction, these violations will continue to unlawfully prevent U.S. citizens from registering to vote and voting,” the plaintiffs wrote in a supporting memo. They are represented by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
Also included were affidavits from several other voters impacted by the new law.
Among them was Carola Clark, who is originally from Germany. Clark met her American husband while he was stationed in Cold War-era West Berlin. The couple moved to the U.S. and got married after the Berlin Wall fell.
Clark was a lawful permanent resident when she first landed in Wyoming. She moved to Michigan, and then Indiana, where she’s lived since 1999.
But citizenship didn’t come until 2025, a year after Clark got a license.
She found the proof-of-citizenship process “confusing and stressful” — noting she received Marion County’s notice just before a vacation, that it wasn’t dated, and that it didn’t specify whether the copies of her documents should be notarized or otherwise authenticated.
Clark wrote that she got a mailed confirmation that her application has been processed, but not the result. She found her voter registration “appears” to be active in the state’s online voter portal.
“I am frustrated that I will have to visit the BMV again, long before my license is expired, so that my license does not cause erroneous citizenship status flags,” Clark’s declaration reads. “I am even more frustrated that no one in the citizenship process, BMV license process, or the Indiana voter registration process told me that my license was causing this flag. I am concerned that BMV’s outdated citizenship information could have prevented me from being registered.”
The court hasn’t yet made a decision on the injunction request. The state hasn’t filed a response either.
A spokesperson for Secretary of State Diego Morales — the state’s elections chief and a naturalized citizen himself — referred the Capital Chronicle to the Office of Attorney General, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Morales has previously been an enthusiastic supporter of the law.
“As a naturalized citizen myself, I know we have ZERO problems showing proof of citizenship,” he posted to X in April, in response to Marion County-based complaints about the citizenship proof process.
Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com
