BATON ROUGE – Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry said a federal data program that verifies citizenship status uncovered that 403 noncitizens registered to vote in Louisiana out of a total voting pool of 2.96 million, with 83 having voted in at least one election since the 1980s.

The state used the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program for the first time this year after President Donald Trump’s administration removed system fees.

“If you keep your voter rolls clean, that's the foundation of election integrity,” Landry said in an interview.

Landry’s findings have come as the U.S. Senate begins debate this week on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (or SAVE America Act), a Republican bill that would require proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, a real ID or a passport when registering to vote and picture IDs, such as a driver’s license, when casting a ballot.

President Trump has claimed that between 3 million and 5 million “illegal votes” caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and that tens of thousands of non-citizen votes in swing states handed the White House to Joe Biden in 2020. He is pressuring the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act “to stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections."

Voting rights advocates say his claims are greatly exaggerated and that the act could disenfranchise Americans who do not have passports or copies of their birth certificates or who have changed their names after getting married.

“We have a problem in this country already with voter participation, where about half our country doesn't vote,” said Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voters Organized to Educate and Voice of the Experienced, two Louisiana nonprofits focused on promoting social justice and democracy. “So, you want to reduce that further in the face of a non-problem, an invented
problem?”

According to the Secretary of State’s election statistics, only 36.3% of Louisiana voters participated in the state’s last gubernatorial election in 2023.

Landry said even a small number of ineligible voters could affect an election.

“Every ineligible voter that is on our roll – and every time they vote – it cancels out the vote of a valid voter, a person who is eligible to vote,” Landry said.

Landry said she was not surprised there are noncitizens registered to vote in Louisiana because voter registration is offered when a person fills out other state paperwork, such as when applying for a driver’s license.

“If they're getting a document put in front of them … some of them may have just gone ahead and registered,” Landry said.

Concern about election integrity, especially non-citizen voting, has been an ongoing concern for Republican-led states and policymakers.

But recent examinations by other states of non-citizen registrations closely track Louisiana’s results. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said of the state’s 2.1 million registered voters, just one “confirmed non-citizen” was found, and that person had never voted.

An audit of voter rolls in Georgia in 2024 found 20 registered non-citizens out of 8.2 million registrations. In 2024, Idaho discovered 36 “very likely” registered non-citizens in a total pool of 1 million voters. Montana recently found 23 possible noncitizen registrants in a voting pool of about 785,000.

In 2024, Gov. Jeff Landry signed an executive order requiring all state agencies to include a written declaration on applications for public assistance and voter registration that only citizens are eligible to vote.

Rep. Gerald “Beau” Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, recently proposed a bill mandating the use of the federal citizenship verification program in Louisiana.

“We've had an increasing number of folks come across our Southern border, and there's been a crackdown on that,” Beaullieu said. “If we have more people who are in our country illegally, you would think that you would more than likely have an uptick in activity with people trying to illegally vote.”

The Secretary of State had been hesitant to use the SAVE program in the past due to high costs – $1.50 for every name examined – but in his second term, Trump removed the transaction fee.

If the SAVE America Act passes, states would be required to detect noncitizen voters by using either the federal program or other databases that cross-check Social Security numbers. Records from state agencies that administer identification cards and driver’s licenses could also be checked.

After the U.S. Senate failed to pass the act in 2025, Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, promised to bring the bill to another vote. Thune recently said there does not appear to be enough votes to break the filibuster in the Senate, a procedure that would require 60 of the body’s 100 votes.

The Brennan Center, a nonprofit law and public policy institute, says 21 million U.S. citizens of voting age do not have ready access to documents proving their citizenship, and only about half of American adults have a passport.

That group includes newly married women whose birth certificates may not align with their new names and prevent them from voting. The center said two-thirds of Black Americans and many young voters lack a valid U.S. passport or access to necessary documents.

Louisiana voters can check and update their registrations at GeauxVote.com or via the GeauxVote mobile app. The deadline for voters to update their registration is 30 days before an election, if mailed to the Secretary of State’s office, or 20 days before an election if done online.

Educational videos regarding closed-party primaries are also available on the Secretary of State website.