More than 5,000 Utah voters need to provide proof of citizenship under new state law

Out of Utah’s more than 2 million registered voters, a tiny fraction of a percent — 27 people — were confirmed to be noncitizens, state election officials announced on Wednesday while sharing the results of a more than yearlong “comprehensive citizenship review” of Utah’s voter rolls. 

Those 27 — including one that was found and reported during a preliminary review in January — have been removed from the state’s voter rolls, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson told reporters during a news conference at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City. 

Of the 27, 10 were found in Salt Lake County while 11 were in Utah County. Three were registered in Weber County, two in Tooele County and one in Washington County, according to the lieutenant governor’s report.

Henderson’s also found 25 registered voters who are “probable noncitizens,” she said. They’ll be given 30 days to provide proof of citizenship or else be removed from the state’s voter rolls by their county clerks. 

While the “goal is none,” she said, the review’s results show Utah “aligns pretty well with what other states who have taken this task on have found.” 

‘Not a widespread problem’: Lt. gov. releases early findings from voter citizenship review 

“This demonstrates that there is not a widespread problem (with noncitizens voting), and that states and our county clerks, for the most part, do a very good job of making sure that our voter rolls are clean, and that only eligible voters are registering,” Henderson said. 

Over the past few years, Henderson said “there’s been a narrative,” especially in national politics, that “there’s a lot of ineligible people voting in our elections,” which is why in April 2025 she instructed her staff to launch a “first of its kind” and “total” review of the state’s voter registration rolls.

She said Utah’s statewide review shows county clerks already do a good job verifying Utah’s voter rolls, and in many of those cases when people registered to vote when they weren’t eligible it was because they provided false information saying they were a U.S. citizen when they registered. 

“There was nothing that the clerks would have been able to identify through our methods at that time that would suggest they were not a citizen,” said Daniel Wade, director of elections systems. “So those voters do need to be held accountable for this. This was through no fault of our own, it was just voters (who) gave us incorrect information.”

For those cases, state elections officials will work with county clerks and their attorneys to investigate possible criminal charges, Henderson said.

“Whether or not anyone gets prosecuted, that is someone else’s job, that is not my role,” Henderson said. “But there are really significant penalties for this. There are state and federal laws that could provide prison or fines. I believe that if someone registers to vote illegally and they’re not a citizen, they’ll likely forfeit their ability to become a citizen.”

It’s also worth noting, however, that of the 27 people who were identified as noncitizen voters and shouldn’t have been registered, nearly half (12) voluntarily contacted their county clerks and asked to be removed from the voter rolls, Wade said.

While the review found a relatively tiny number of people registered to vote who were confirmed noncitizens, it also found thousands more that now are at risk of being unable to vote in state or local elections if they don’t provide documentation proving their U.S. citizenship before the upcoming November election under a new state law.

Thousands of Utahns need to provide proof of citizenship

According to the review, there were 5,007 Utah voters who had a citizenship status that “we were unable to confirm,” Henderson wrote in a note prefacing the report’s results. Many of those were “legacy” voters, or registered to vote years before driver license or Social Security numbers were required to register under state law, Henderson said.

Now, under a new state law passed earlier this year, HB209, those voters will need to provide “documentary proof” of U.S. citizenship before this year’s November general election — or else they’ll only be provided a ballot with federal races and they won’t be able to vote in state or local elections. 

Utah bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote advances 

Starting Friday, Henderson said her office will be sending letters to those 5,007 Utahns notifying them of the state’s new proof of citizenship requirements. 

“To be eligible to vote in upcoming state and local races, they will need to show proof of citizenship to their county clerks, otherwise they will receive a federal-only ballot,” Henderson wrote in the report released Wednesday. 

With HB209, Utah lawmakers created a “bifurcated ballot system” for elections starting in November 2026, where a voter chooses whether to provide documentary proof of United States citizenship when registering to vote or before voting. Those voters who do not provide proof of U.S. citizenship would then only be able to vote in races for federal office, not any state or local offices. Federal law does not require proof of citizenship to vote for members of Congress or the president, though it maintains that only U.S. citizens can legally cast a ballot.

“Federal law says that you only have to say you’re a citizen and attest to being a citizen under penalty of perjury,” Henderson said. “Our state law used to mirror that. And now this year it changed, so we can’t just tell (people who don’t provide proof of citizenship) they can’t vote. We would get sued and it would be unconstitutional. … So they would get a federal only ballot because now our state law has changed.” 

Of the more than 5,000 Utah voters who now need to provide proof of citizenship, Daniel Wade, director of elections systems, said at least 2,000 are “legacy voters” or are elderly voters who have been registered voters for years — some of them decades — meaning they didn’t need to provide driver license or Social Security numbers when they first registered to vote. 

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“Another group that is going to be affected by this are citizens that are just newly naturalized,” he said, with a driver license that hasn’t been updated yet to reflect their new citizenship.

Henderson said her office will be encouraging county clerks to work with the more than 5,000 people across the state who will be receiving the letters from her office notifying them of their new requirements. 

“We will be following up with clerks to make sure that they are following up with the voters in their counties and doing everything possible to make sure that they aren’t disenfranchised,” she said. 

Henderson said she’s “always concerned” about the potential for unintentional eligible voter disenfranchisement. 

“It keeps me up at night,” she said. “Honestly, I’ve had a lot of angst about this.”

However, she also said that HB209 “serves a really valuable purpose.” 

“I think it’s good to have a place to kind of sequester folks who don’t have that documentation in a way that doesn’t completely disenfranchise them,” she said. “I think the way we’ve done it is responsible and tries to balance the idea of preserving rights for people while also making sure that, you know, ineligible people aren’t registering (to vote).” 

Review comes amid federal lawsuit

A few months after her office launched the review, the U.S. Department of Justice filed lawsuits against Utah and four other states — Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New Jersey — “for failure to produce their full voter registration lists upon request.” The lawsuit accused Henderson of violating the Civil Rights Act by refusing to “provide the demanded federal election records.” Similar lawsuits against eight other states have since been dismissed.

Those records that President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking include sensitive information like Social Security numbers and full dates of birth.

For Utah’s review, Henderson said her office cross referenced voter registration records with the state’s Driver License Division, then, if necessary through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

While some states have put their entire voter registration database through the Homeland Security program, “we didn’t want to do that,” Henderson said, “so we only put the records through there that we couldn’t verify through other means.”

“I want to protect Utah voters’ data,” she said. “If I don’t have to send their records through a federal database, I’m not going to.”

The results of Utah’s review, which shows no “widespread problems,” Henderson said, “does beg the question of what is the purpose of the federal government trying to get their hands on all this private data.”

Read the results of the lieutenant governor’s full review below:

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