Kansas Republicans want citizenship status listed on each driver’s license. Republicans argue it’ll make elections more secure, but Democrats worry it will expose immigrants to discrimination. 

The bill, which is at the beginning of the legislative process, would have each license list the driver’s legal status. Committee Chair Rep. Pat Proctor, a Leavenworth County Republican, said he plans on introducing amendments that would also change how a license looks, to make it vertical the same way driver’s licenses are for Kansans under 21. 

Clay Barker, general counsel for the Kansas Secretary of State, said noncitizen voting is very rare. 

A 2017 study of 42 jurisdictions with large noncitizen populations in 12 states found that suspected cases of noncitizen voting happened just 0.0001% of the time. The study looked at the 2016 election and concluded that there were no cases of illegal voting in 40 of the 42 jurisdictions. 

Barker, who spoke in favor of the bill, said there are two cases of noncitizen voting currently being prosecuted in Kansas. There are three other cases where charges are possible soon and 10 more cases are being investigated. 

“This would provide an extra layer of protection to ensure that noncitizens don’t vote in our elections, either by mistake or intentionally,” he told lawmakers Thursday afternoon. 

Barker said the secretary of state’s office supports this bill solely for election security-related reasons. But opponents are more concerned with other issues. 

Rep. Brooklynne Mosley, a Douglas County Democrat, said people vote maybe twice a year, but are showing their ID to buy alcohol and cigarettes way more often. Then comes showing a driver’s license to the police. 

She said this increases the likelihood that immigrants will be profiled. Given the recent surge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country, the proposed legislation could be dangerous, opponents argued. 

“Freedom papers, essentially,” Mosley said, making a reference to documents freed slaves needed to keep before the Civil War. “We are profiling people and saying that there are folks that are going to have different privileges.”

Florida law enforcement told a U.S. citizen last year “You got no rights here” because he was a person of color and they assumed he was undocumented. ICE has detained more than 170 U.S. citizens, ProPublica reported last year, before recent events in Minneapolis.   

Kansas has tried to pass citizenship requirements for voting before, but a judge threw out that law in 2018. 

The previous law said Kansans needed to show a driver’s license, birth certificate, naturalization papers or passport to vote. 

Chief U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson said the law violated the National Voter Registration Act and the 14th Amendment because evidence of a few noncitizens voting is “not strong enough to outweigh the tangible and quantifiable burden on eligible voter registration applicants in Kansas who were not registered to vote before January 1, 2013.”

Republicans denied that the proposed new bill will make racial profiling worse or create any additional burdens for voters. They argue that everyone agrees noncitizens shouldn’t vote in elections, so adding this extra layer of protection is worth doing. 

Barker said noncitizens can be mistakenly added to voter lists and sent a card telling them they can vote, so someone assumes that they are allowed to. He said noncitizens get temporary driver’s licenses, so poll workers can’t tell the difference. 

This bill would prevent that from happening. 

Rep. Rick James, a Republican who represents Bourbon and Linn counties, said police use DNA tests to find people who break the law. This is similar, he said. 

“You don’t belong in the United States unless you’re legal,” he said. “And if they’re not legal, this is a way to solve that issue.”