Citizen Voter Integrity and Federal Election Assurance Act of 2025

Constitutional concerns with the original

1. The original's broad phrase 'citizens are eligible to vote Federal in elections' could be read as a new voter qualification imposed directly on states, intruding on the states' reserved power under Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 and the Tenth Amendment over their own election elector qualifications.
2. A constitutional amendment is unnecessary because 18 U.S.C. § 611 already makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and Congress has Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 authority to make or alter time, place, and manner regulations for congressional elections, plus the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18) to implement that power.
3. Without explicit due-process safeguards, the amendment could invite states to purge voters based solely on database flags, risking erroneous removal of naturalized citizens and violating the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment (applicable to the federal government) and the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause (applicable to the states).

Solution text

Operative provisions

Bipartisan rationale

Honors Democratic priorities by protecting every eligible citizen's right to vote through explicit due-process safeguards—mandatory 90-day notice, an appeal process, and count-only-after-verification provisional ballots—and by avoiding a divisive constitutional amendment, instead using federal grants rather than unfunded mandates. Honors Republican priorities by making noncitizen voting an effective federal enforcement priority, requiring citizenship verification, penalizing noncompliant states, and ensuring that noncitizens are removed from federal voter rolls.

Constitutional citations

• → Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 (Spending Clause)
• → Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 (Necessary and Proper Clause)
• → Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 (Congressional regulation of federal elections)
• → Amendment XIV, Section 5 (Enforcement Clause)
• → Amendment X (reserved state power limit)

Vote-count path

~250 House votes: 170 centrist Democrats + 80 moderate Republicans; ~65 Senate votes: 50 Democrats + 15 Republicans from Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.