Registered Boone County voters sent letters questioning their citizenship status
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Two people in Boone County asked the County Clerk's Office to remove their names from voter rolls after they were flagged by the Missouri Secretary of State's Office using a federal database, Clerk Brianna Lennon said Tuesday.
The two were among 33 people whose names were included on a spring list of registered voters flagged by the database as potential non-citizens. The voters had registered through various locations, including the driver's license office, the Department of Social Services and the Secretary of State's Office.
The state identified those names using a federal database. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month allowed states to resume using the database.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed the database, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, was restored Friday.
The Missouri Secretary of State's Office sent out a list of voters flagged by the SAVE program last November, but the database isn't always accurate.
Lennon told ABC 17 News in February that the program flagged 74 voters.
In an interview Tuesday, Lennon said her office received three separate lists of names in November, January and April. Each list had fewer names than the previous one. Lennon said her office can't act on the list.
"If there's no actionable things to do with them, I cannot legally go start asking people for proof of their citizenship," she said. "I've got no basis of documentation as to why I'm being asked to go start randomly telling people that I need their citizenship information."
Along with sending out lists of flagged voters to county clerks, the secretary of state also sent letters to the voters who were flagged in April, asking them to confirm their citizenship.
"The Missouri Secretary of State is committed to ensuring election integrity by verifying that only U.S. citizens are voting in Missouri," the letter reads. "At this time, we have been unable to verify your citizenship."
The letter then informs the recipient that the database could have some inaccurate data, and that the letter doesn't determine that the recipient is ineligible to vote. On the last page of the three-page letter, there are two options for the recipient to check off: "I affirm that I am a citizen of the United States" or "I am not a United States Citizen and request cancellation of my Missouri voter registration."
The letter also requested a response by July 21, and if not, then the recipients' local election authority will review the matter and determine voter eligibility.
"There's nothing happening at the local level that is resulting in people being deleted as a response to this. Unless they are removing themselves, like they're being asked to be removed, or they're providing indications that they are not citizens, nobody is being removed," Lennon said.
