TOPEKA — Kansas’ failed proof of citizenship law could serve as a cautionary tale for Congress and other states just beginning to craft similar voting restrictions, a report found.

Federal legislation reintroduced earlier this year would require voters to provide documented proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. Kansas has been there, done that.

A report from three organizations, analyzing data from Kansas and Arizona, posits that such citizenship laws are costly, error-prone and disenfranchise voters. Plus, citizenship is already a requirement to vote nationwide.

Noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare, said Lata Nott, director of voting rights policy at the Campaign Legal Center and one of the report’s authors.

“We wrote this report to look into the actual financial costs of these laws, but, of course, there’s also the cost of — it’s a nonmonetary cost — people get disenfranchised by these laws, or you make it really hard for them to vote,” Nott said.

It was issued by Dēmos, a New York-based think tank focused on democracy; the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit legal group; and State Voices, an advocacy organization with state-based affiliates across the country.

The report used Kansas and Arizona as touchstones to illustrate the unforeseen financial costs of executing documentary proof of citizenship laws as they gain traction in Congress and statehouses nationwide.

The federal proof of citizenship law hasn’t progressed, but Indiana, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wyoming enacted legislation in 2025.

Kansas’ stint with a documentary proof of citizenship law was brief. After the passage of the Kansas Secure and Fair Elections, or SAFE, Act in 2011, every Kansan registering to vote was required to provide documentary proof of citizenship, which could include a passport or a birth certificate.

The law was implemented in 2013, and it was in effect for more than 3 years before a judge blocked its enforcement.

The report’s authors reviewed fiscal notes attached to documentary proof of citizenship legislation. Lawmakers often didn’t provide any fiscal analysis, ignore fiscal effects on local governments or provide incomplete fiscal analyses.

The report said Kansas’ fiscal note was an example of “gross underestimation” of state costs and burdens on local election officials. Lawmakers estimated a $12,500 increase in expenditures in the Secretary of State’s Office in fiscal year 2011 and a $1,000 increase in the following fiscal year.

In its first full fiscal year, the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office spent more than $192,000 to implement the act. The report hypothesizes the office spent more than $350,000 in total between the law’s passage and effective dates.

At the time, county election officials did not have access to systems that could crosscheck passport numbers or birth certificate records.

Neda Khoshkhoo, interim director of democracy at Dēmos and an author of the report, said proof of citizenship laws erect social barriers, and those barriers are tied to a chronic underfunding of this type of legislation.

“They, ultimately, are a form of voter suppression, which has a particular impact on voters of color and low-income voters and other historically marginalized groups,” Khoshkhoo said.

The disenfranchisement compounds, she said, when downstream effects of underfunding lead to incorrect implementation of a citizenship verification system, and voters are increasingly denied access to ballots.

The report said documentary proof of citizenship did not work in Kansas and came at the cost of disenfranchising thousands of voters and millions of dollars lost. 

Implementing proof of citizenship laws typically require investments in technology upgrades, staff training and data privacy, Nott said. Kansas tied its citizenship verification process to its driver’s license database.

“When you do that, you will probably run into some errors,” Nott said. “Kansas has. Arizona has. And those errors, they’re not just minor errors. They’re errors that disenfranchise people, that take away their right to vote.”

However the report identified a larger problem. Division of motor vehicles clerks in Kansas weren’t allowed, by policy, to request proof of citizenship from voters when renewing or updating their licenses. Clerks statewide also were not allowed to inform people of the new requirement. 

The report said Kansas “faced a multitude of technological, organizational and legal challenges that were a direct result of the flawed system designed by the SAFE Act and its implementing regulations and directives.”

More than 30,000 Kansans were prevented from voting and saw their registrations suspended or deemed invalid because of the state’s law.

The report said there was “a yearslong breakdown in communication and coordination between the DMV, the secretary of state, county election offices, and voters” throughout the duration of the law.

In 2018, a federal judge struck it down, ruling the law unconstitutional and in violation of the National Voter Registration Act. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judgment in 2020, concluding the law had an outsized effect on voters. It ruled that the inclusion of noncitizens on Kansas’ voter rolls could be attributed to administrative issues. A confirmed 39 noncitizens successfully registered to vote in Kansas between 1999 and 2013, making up 0.002% of voters, according to the appeals court’s opinion.

The full cost of ameliorating the state’s errors was not documented, the report said.

Proof of citizenship laws can sound like common sense policy, said Marissa Liebling, senior director of programs at State Voices. But the complications and the financial hurdles that come with enacting them amass.

Then-Secretary of State, now attorney general, Kris Kobach was an advocate of the law, billing it as a way to combat voter fraud. Instances of fraud were never proven in court.

The state ended up paying $1.9 million in attorneys’ fees to the winning parties of two lawsuits, the report said. Staff time in the Attorney General’s and Secretary of State’s offices spent on the litigation wasn’t unaccounted for in the report.

A spokesperson for the current Secretary of State’s Office said Kansas’ documentary proof of citizenship law “was a tool to help with the integrity of Kansas voter rolls.”

Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who is a Republican candidate for governor, was a member of the House at the time the citizenship law was passed. He voted in favor of passage, according to legislative records.

Liebling, Khoshkhoo and Nott expect more proof of citizenship laws in 2026.

Nott interprets their increase in popularity as “one of many signs that we’ve had in the past few years that election administration has gotten so politicized.”

What once was a domain for “wonky election nerds,” as Nott put it, has become polarized in every aspect. 

Liebling said voter education, fail-safe options for voters and proper, accurate investments are solutions to costly, error-prone election legislation. The effects of proof of citizenship laws can be acute and profound for people who have historically been excluded from electoral processes, she said, but the issue touches everyone.

“When you compound the fiscal and administrative costs with a real burden on voters in many different communities and geographies across the board,” Liebling said, “I think it really requires some rethinking as to the value of these kinds of policies.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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