In 7 States, You Can Register to Vote on Election Day Without ID. Are Non-Citizens Voting?

Some states don’t require photo ID to vote; others don’t require any ID to vote. For some, though, it’s like Idi Amin wrote their election laws. Seven states that allow people to register to vote on Election Day don’t require photo ID before they cast a ballot that same day. 

Proponents call it “Same-Day Registration.” In practice, it means in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Montana, and Vermont, an illegal alien could show up on Election Day, register to vote using a fake name and address, and immediately cast a ballot. Even if election officials and police eventually catch him, his vote will still count.

A 2014 article in the academic journal Electoral Studies and analyses by the non-partisan group JustFacts found that as much as 27 percent of non-citizens in the U.S. were illegally registered to vote in the 2008 election, and between 6.4 and 16 percent of them cast a ballot. Of those, 82 percent of them voted for Barack Obama. 

In 2022, the U.S. had 20 million voting-age non-citizens. That comes to potentially 4.5 million illegal noncitizen votes if the numbers from 2008 held. And 2008 was before many states adopted same-day registration policies, only increasing the risk.

Restoration News covered one such situation that occurred in Michigan. A Chinese student without U.S. citizenship registered and voted the same day during the early voting period, using his student ID. Even though authorities caught him, his vote still counted. Imagine how much easier it is in states that require nothing more than proof of address for non-citizens to vote on Election Day.

The recent push for same-day registration stems from a leftist strategy to boost likely Democratic voter turnout. Democrats have used this strategy of bloating voter rolls for two decades. Making voting as easy as possible allows urban political machines to get large numbers of residents to the polls quickly in a pinch, and, if necessary, inflate the numbers illegally. 

Seven Blue States Allow Same-day Registration AND No ID

According to Ballotpedia, 22 states currently allow same-day registration. Meanwhile, 27 states do not require photo ID to vote, and 15 others require no form of ID to vote. These seven states mix the worst of both worlds.

Some states with same-day registration do require additional vetting for same-day registering voters. New Mexico and Nevada don’t require photo ID for pre-registered voters but do require it for same-day registrants. Nevada, in fact, does not even accept military IDs or passports as valid photo IDs, requiring same-day registrants to produce state-issued photo IDs. 

Minnesota’s “safeguard” is the weakest: If a same-day registrant can’t produce a photo ID, they may bring a registered voter from that precinct or staff person of a residential facility to vouch for them. Is that trustworthy?

I’ve contended that if states insist on allowing same-day registration, they should at least provide the additional security of making all same-day registrants cast provisional ballots. This would increase the workload on election staffers, but many states that allow same-day registration give overly generous time to staff to count provisional ballots that already drag out election results for weeks. Counting these votes as provisional ballots would provide an additional level of security and prevent non-citizens’ votes from counting, as occurred at least once this year in Michigan.

Currently, California and Virginia follow this model. Both allow same-day registration; neither requires photo ID. But both states count same-day registrants’ votes as provisional ballots.

Although Maine currently has no photo ID requirement, there is a grassroots effort there to change that. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) said last month her conservative group the Dinner Table has collected 125,000 signatures, more than enough to put photo ID on the ballot next election. All that remains is the Secretary of State approving the signatures as valid. The proposal would also require absentee voters to provide a copy of a photo ID or an ID number.

(READ: Make Every State Count Ballots Like Florida)

Getting out the Democrat Vote

Another reason the Left pushes same-day registration is because it saves their activists time and their donors money. Beginning in 2005, leftist activists switched their strategy to focus on registering likely Democratic voters rather than persuading independents. Since 2011 alone, Democrat-aligned groups have spent over $6 billion in tax-free donations targeting demographics that vote overwhelmingly Democrat with registration drives. 

Although Democrat strategists would prefer every state adopt automatic voter registration (AVR), same-day registration is the next best thing for them. In states with same-day registration, Democrats and their activist allies don’t have to worry about pesky registration deadlines and can encourage left-leaning demographics to show up to the polls whether they’re registered or not—and whether they’re U.S. citizens or not.

This leftist strategy of artificially boosting turnout harms the democratic process by bloating the rolls and polls with people who would rather not vote and do so uninformed and reluctantly. Additionally, many of these reluctant voters are politically activated through divisive fearmongering against segments of their fellow Americans rather than on actual political issues. 

Eliminating same-day registration and forcing people to register ahead produces a more intentional, informed electorate just as requiring photo ID produces a more eligible electorate by all but eliminating opportunities for fraud.

Despite the harm to the country and the democratic process, however, this strategy does work for Democrats. 2014 data showed states with same-day registration—almost all Democrat-leaning—had higher turnout rates than states without it.

A far left University of Massachusetts Amherst and leftist think tank Demos study found states with same-day registration have higher black and “Latinx” turnouts.

When North Carolina adopted same-day registration for early voting in 2007, it markedly increased black voter turnout—which broke for Barack Obama the following year by 95 percent. According to PBS, 35 percent of same-day registrant were black, although they made up only 22 percent of the state’s electorate. 

The George Soros-funded group Democracy North Carolina estimated roughly 40,000 first-time black voters registered using same-day registration, and that the state had the largest voter increase in the country over the 2004 election.

Demos argues same-day registration helps young people, the historically disenfranchised, and recent movers vote in higher numbers. Democracy North Carolina bragged of helping to increase early voting sites, including on college campuses—college students being another demographic that broke heavily for Obama. This helped early voting to more than double from 2004. 

All of this undoubtedly helped propel Obama to victory in North Carolina by 15,000 votes, or 0.3 percent—the first time a Democrat won the state since Jimmy Carter.

In the 2022 midterms, many credited an exceptionally high youth turnout for blunting a potential red wave. A Tufts University-based think tank noted states with the highest youth turnout—Michigan, Minnesota, Maine, Oregon, and Colorado—had same-day registration or AVR. Of those, only Oregon lacks same-day registration, and the other four have both. In all those states, the 18-29-year-old demographic surpassed 30 percent of the vote, higher than the all-time national midterm high of 28 percent in 2018.

Election Integrity Efforts Should Not Rest

Just because President-elect Donald Trump did better with the youth vote in 2024 and won the young male vote doesn’t mean conservatives should ignore attempts to encourage or artificially boost the youth vote. Even among the more informed younger voters, conservatives will never compete until they capture public education and universities, which produce Democratic propaganda that only dissipates with age.

Same-day registration bloats the rolls with lazy, uninformed, and sometimes fraudulent voters. Failing to require photo ID on top of allowing same-day registration heightens the potential for fraud. Hopefully, Congress will pass the ACE Act, eliminating the need to haggle with these policies at the state level. But until then, conservatives in states with same-day registration should at least fight for as many limitations as possible like following the California and Virginia model of counting those votes as provisional ballots and enforcing strict photo ID requirements for same-day registration voters as does Nevada.

(READ MORE: How the Federal Government Can Clean Up States’ Voter Rolls)

 Editor's note: this article has been updated with more accurate map graphics.